You know those little bobble head toys that people put in their windows? The ones that nod and jiggle as you drive? Yeah. That's me. I'm on day nine of an inner ear infection that has just been kicking my ass.

So not last weekend, but the weekend before, I'm up at the cottage with Mike and a bunch of my extended family. We're playing Euchre, I'm having a glass of nice white wine, it's all good. I get to feeling sleepy, so upstairs we go. I stagger a tiny bit when walking to the bathroom and Mike teases me about being drunk. Now I know I'm a cheap drunk now, but one glass of wine a stagger does not make.

Wake up the next morning with the spins, on the light cycle. Feeling a little queasy but whatever. So I stagger around, eat a bit of toast then promptly throw up the toast. Thus begins a day filled with increasing vertigo and vomiting that made me pray for my eyes to pop out, just so the incredible pressure in my head could be relieved somewhat.

In about 12 hours I went from being able to sit up and feeling mildly dizzy and pukey to needing something, anything over my eyes so that I wouldn't try to focus on anything and vomiting if I dared to sit up or open my eyes. Just nasty. I mean, I'd open my eyes and I couldn't track anything. But I'd try. It's amazing how automatic sight is. You look at something, it slips away, you go back, etc, until you puke. *sighs*

So finally I ask Mike to call the telehealth number because the vomiting was starting to scare me. The spins, enh, they sucked, but whatever. Not being able to keep anything down at all, scary. Plus I was damned hungry. The response of the nice lady on the phone was to tell Mike to get me to a hospital within the hour. Apparently the spins and vomiting is also a potential sign of a stroke.

We get to KW, er, Grand River Hospital and I get Mike to put me in a wheelchair because at this point I've learned that opening my eyes is an intensely bad idea and I have zero interest in stumbling around a strange ER. Go through the standard hoops of getting admitted to ER, and I ask the nurse if I can lie down (to keep the vomiting at bay, you see.) "Oh we don't put stretchers in the waiting room, you understand why of course." was the response, implying heavily that it would look bad or something.

So I took great joy in violently vomiting into my fabulous stainless steel bowl (they didn't think to provide me with something else to puke in, of course) in the middle of their very lovely waiting room... and then sobbing and crying because it hurt so badly. I hope she felt like a fucking bitch. I really do. At least once I made it into the inner sanctum everyone I dealt with was fabulous and gentle with me.

Insert sleeping poorly on a stretcher, cracking jokes with the nurse that put the IV into me, having Mike read and stroke my hair, a doctor surprised at how bad the eye jumping (hell if I remember the name of it) was, and finally getting up and walking out. None too steady, but walking out, with my eyes open (a tiny bit). Thank you Gravol!

That was Sunday. *sighs*

Monday I discovered that all that violent vomiting had created haemorrhaging in my eyes. I looked like a zombie. I couldn't walk without whamming into the walls.

It's been getting better slowly, but I'm going mad. I can't drive; it's not safe. I'm basically wandering around like a drunk, and my reaction times are about the same. I keep thinking I'm getting better, and then I stand up for too long and want to keel over again. Dr. McKeown has told me that it's just going to take time to heal -- both the infection and the haemorrhages.

It's maddening to me when I'm not capable of doing what needs to be done. When I can't just take out the recycling that's piling up. Or do a quick jaunt over to Dollarama to get more photo albums so I can archive my pictures from the trips this summer. When I just feel like shit and there's nothing I can do about it to make it better at all except wait.

At least now I can read. The first part of last week, I couldn't focus on anything at all, it was all blurry and kept spinning by me. Today my left eye is blurry and annoying, but I can sit and read my forums, I can stand around and be super-greeter and chat in my silly pirate game. Thank god.

Plus I managed to clean my desk and file some crap. So, little silver linings, I guess.