Weird Symptom Tangent

[Be Still]

the ground sometimes feels like it's moving up and down when I'm walking. This symptom used to be terrible and I could barely walk before. I felt like I was walking on a boat.

Reminds me of a weird syndrome I ran across while researching Dysautonomia, Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (mol dee-dee-BARK-moh), MDDS. Not for a minute suggesting that you have it, Rita, I think the kind of disequilibrium you describe is awful. It could be worse:

?a type of vertigo and imbalance that occurs after getting off of a boat. The usual situation is that of a person who has gone on a cruise. Most individuals with this diagnosis are women between the ages of 40 and 50 who go on a 7-day cruise. After getting off the boat, or "debarking" (debarquement), they develop a rocking sensation, as if they are still on the boat. The rocking sensation may persist for months or even years !? http://www.tchain.com/otoneurology/disorde...entral/mdd.html

I think that would be the last straw . . .

[Dizzy Dame]

I had that happen last summer. I went on a trip to the Marquesas and I was on a small cargo ship for over a month. This boat was much smaller than any cruise ship, and it rocked constantly. When the trip was over I developed "land sickness". I got nauscious, dizzy and had a hard time keeping my balance, just as though I was on a ship, but I was on dry land.

Fortunately the land sickness only lasted about 24 hours. It was reall wierd though

[yogini]

Thanks, Be Still. I actually saw a great otolangologist who specialized in balance disorders. At first he thought I had a balance disorder like the one you describe. I went through 3 months of physical therapy for my inner ear. The symptoms started to go away gradually and then suddenly reappeared, so my docs had to agree that it was POTS, not inner ear. The inner ear condition would not have come back once it went away. This symptom was THE ABSOLUTE WORST POTS symptom for me. Give me tachycardia, headaches, nausea or fatigue any day! Thankfully I learned to walk a lot better with practice and the symptom only comes back when I am having a flareup, and only mildly. I walked like a snail for about a year, though!