« The Dammit Thought | Main | My Wart Cure »
February 16, 2008
The Motion Sickness Epiphany
Just a few minutes ago I was at Mama Lia's Pizza talking with the owner about the trip to Disney and the Cruise. Conversation eventually turned to motion sickness which then led to charters he'd been on on Lake Erie, a charter I'd been on in the Atlantic Ocean (no motion sickness, by the way) and a charter a buddy had been on (spectacular seasickness all the way around).
I eventually said that the motion sickness I'd had on some of the rides at Disney and on the Cruise had lasted all day, though it wasn't ever severe. "Not as bad..." I started and then had trouble figuring out when I'd been horribly motion sick. I knew I'd had some sort of motion sickness and that when it had hit it had lasted all day and that only sleep seemed to cure it . And it had happened more than once.
And then it hit me. And sort of cleared something up.
This hasn't happened in years, but for a period of time, it seemed that if I ever got really excited, or maybe exerted myself, I might have what I thought was a severe dizzy spell. It would, to me, look like the room was spinning 1/2 way around and then snapping back only to repeat. If I moved my head the motion felt exaggerated and when it was over I'd be sick the rest of the day.
The first time it happened someone, I think my sister, had gotten a new bike and I was being allowed to put it together; and I was really happy to be allowed to do it. Oh, I forgot to mention, I threw up during one or two of this episodes and for this first one I remember puking spaghetti out my nose.
Not long after that, and this would have been when I was in 8th or 9th grade as I remember it happening at the Jr. High, I was carrying a projector from one classroom to another. I don't know if it was the excitement of being out of class and doing a special task, or the amount of exertion involved in lugging the projector around (it was some sort of special, big, thing ... you remember what 60's -era AV equipment was like). I had to sit in the hallway until the episode passed. I was nauseous the rest of the day.
It may have happened once at the gym, when I was in 10th grade. I remember explaining the condition to one of the guys there and he commented that I should probably get the condition addressed as one day I'd likely have sex with a woman and that it might be rude to throw up on her. (Some of the women readers are thinking yea, men don't like being thrown up on either.)
You know, it would periodically happen with I was twanging the wire. Not enough that I'd ever considered giving it up (I had thousands invested in hand lotion), but I wonder, now, if the worry that it might happen could be the reason I have weak orgasms. Now, maybe realizing this was some sort of concern floating around in my subconscious I'll be released from the worry and I'll start having tectonic-plate shifters. Man, if I didn't have hot pizza waiting for me I'd head to the can and knock one off right now (not for me, but for you). Damn! my endurance; it would be ice cold before I got back to it.
I remember getting sick while bass fishing once. The white bass had started to hit (and when you came into a school of them the fishing was furious for a few minutes — I once caught 12 on 14 casts) and the excitement set the world to spinning.
When I was 25 I'd probably gone a while without having one. I must've told the girl I was dating about them, however, as one night while we were rubbing noses it happened. And I think this was the first time I had a person with me when one happened. When I asked her what my eyes looked like she said they were twitching; this explained the room moving and then snapping back. She also said, "You should have a doctor look at this. It looks a lot worse than you make it sound."
I think that was the last one and I've since come to think it was related to the amount of sugar in my diet. In the above story I'd been eating fairly well for a long while, but my girlfriend and I would sometimes stop for ice cream. At the time it made a lot of sense, looking back I weighed 215 and she was 98 pounds. It isn't like we were going through gallons of the stuff; still, it may have been more than I'd been used to.
Anyway, I mentioned my thought regarding sweets to a doctor, probably five years after the last episode (I'd gone to doctors before about it, but everything always came back looking good). All I remember him saying was something about an 'insulin dump' and probably exertion or excitement.
So why all this? Today?
As I was talking at the pizza shop I was trying to recall the times I'd had bad motion sickness that had left me horribly nauseous all day. And I thought back to the eye-twitching things and realized they had been leaving me motion sick.
It seems sort of anticlimactic now, but when it came to me in the pizza shop I was tickled as hell.
Posted by delmer at February 16, 2008 8:15 PM
Comments
My first thought reading this was "petit mal seizures" but then I read that you've been to the doc and figured he would have thought of that a long time ago, as well as testing you for insulin disorders.
The rest of it lost me. So.. you get it now or not? I'm confused. (Not hard to do these days)
Posted by: Sue at February 17, 2008 8:08 AM
Sue: The last one I recall having was when I was when I was rubbing noses with the little red-haired girl. That's very close to 23 years ago.
Posted by: delmer at February 17, 2008 7:20 PM