Several years ago I was working at a hospital in Manhattan, and I was trying to get a patient out of bed. They didn’t want to get up, or do their exercises, even though that was what they needed to do to get better. I remember the patient, because I was working on the open heart surgery floor at the time. The patient got really mad, and demanded to know how I could I possibly help them, because I had not had open heart surgery and therefore didn’t know what they were going through.
Thank goodness for all the physical therapists, doctors, and nurses in this world that we do not need to have every disorder there is under the sun before we can help patients! Yet, I understand how the patient feels at the same time. Sometimes it is comforting to know that you are not the only one who knows what it feels like to have a condition. My vertigo patients sometimes ask if I have had vertigo. Luckily, I have not, but I work with people who have vertigo every day. One of my patients offered to tell her story of how vertigo and BPPV was affecting her life. I hope her story helps those of you out there who do not know someone with vertigo, and that it gives you comfort that you are not alone, and that there is hope that things can get better.
Prospective Chromatique, Abstract art by Martha Boto 1972
