Welcome everyone to another post of ‘My Brain Lesion and Me’.  For those readers just joining me, I am taking part in WEGO Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge in which I am writing a brand new blog post everyday throughout April, based upon prompts given by WEGO Health.  Today’s prompt reads as follows:

The First Time I…Write a post about the first time you did something?  What is it?  What was it like?  What did you learn from it?

Well, on first thoughts I was going to write about the first time I went to University, but as I have already written about that during a previous post I decided against it.  Instead I have decided to change the challenge a little bit and write about the first time I ‘experienced’ a dizzy spell.

At the time of my very first dizzy spell, I was around the age of 8, and it must have been around November or December as I distinctly remember that during the time the dizziness first started the school was busy with preparations and rehearsals for the annual Christmas Play.

Anyway, the very first attack of the dizziness occurred whilst on a shopping trip at a local DIY store with my parents, looking for new wallpaper for the living room.  We were walking around the large, imposing store and out of the blue with no warning, I became incredibly dizzy, as if the room was spinning out of control around me, as if at any moment if I didn’t hold onto something quickly I would fall, and so I quickly grabbed and held on tight to my Mum’s hand to stop by body from collapsing.  Obviously at the time I was very young, and had no clue as to what was happening to me, so my first instinct was to panic, it felt as if all the air in the store had vanished, and I was unable to breathe, my mouth became very dry and felt as if I was no longer able to swallow.  My vision became disturbed – became blurry and was unable to focus on any visual clues around me, adding to the panic I was experiencing.

After what seemed like an eternity, we left the store, and being able to sit down in the car, felt like a huge relief, although the dizziness still continued for a while longer, but felt much safer sitting down, knowing that I wasn’t able to fall.

And that was the beginning of the dizziness, which gradually became worse, more frequent and intense until it became a constant in my life around a year ago, the dizziness with me 24/7.

Someone recently told me, it was important to get my story out there,  especially as the majority of what is written about dizziness and vertigo discusses it being very much a symptom amongst the elderly, and so is important to make it clear it is something that can occur at any age.  When it first started with me, with the exception of being sent for some blood tests, the dizziness was very much brushed under the carpet instead it being blamed upon psychological factors such as anxiety, instead of being referred to more specialised doctors for further testing.  Dizziness isn’t something that should be ignored, and whatever the age of the person complaining of the symptom it should be taking seriously and investigated until everything has been ruled out.   Believe me, it isn;t a nice symptom to live with, and can at times be totally debilitating.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the post, and able to adequately describe the dizziness and what it was like when it happened.  Please feel free to leave any comments and thoughts, I also appreciate any comments made…