Sometimes making stuff is not about making stuff.
January 10th I was hit with a rather uncomfortable and somewhat severe bout of vertigo. It wasn’t related to any major health issue, nor was it indicative of one. What it was, was a touch of BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo – a crystal in your ear that goes walkabout), and a build up of fluid in my inner ear. The two don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but I was lucky (whooo) and got both concurrently. I didn’t hit my head, I wasn’t previously sick, it just kind of happened.
I became essentially bedridden (couchridden, really, at least I could watch TV). I couldn’t even look at a computer screen, because it set off waves of vertigo. I couldn’t do anything that involved head movement, so I propped myself up, positioned my head so it didn’t move, and watched TV.
For a whole month.
That was in between doctor’s appointments trying to nail down the cause. I did end up getting physiotherapy which involved many shaky, uncomfortable head movements to dislodge the problem causing the BPPV. It wasn’t instant, but it did work. And the liquid in the ears? It just needs to kind of go away, which it has slowly been doing. I’m mostly okay now, although I do have a somewhat spacey feeling left over. Evidently this is the brain working itself out after being fed conflicting information for weeks on end.
This is a lot about not making stuff, isn’t it?
I’ve mentioned before on here how having my hands do something is, without sounding too dramatic, integral to my being. That’s not for some spiritual reason or anything, it’s entirely because I’m a twitchy person. So sitting and watching TV for almost a month on end and not being able to do something with my hands (lots of head movements up and down to see what I was doing was a bad time) has taken me on a bit of an emotional roller coaster; especially when you’re dizzy and not getting answers and find even feeding yourself to be taxing (constant nausea because of the vertigo after all).
Not to sound like I’m moaning here – there are people who have it much worse, and much longer than me. But it does highlight that sometimes we can’t force it, no matter how much we want to. Doing stuff with my hands makes me feel better, maybe physically but definitely emotionally. So when I feel bad (vertigo) I want to make myself feel better, and automatically that goes to knitting or spinning or something. But it’s a conflict when the thing that always makes you feel better ends up making you feel (physically) worse because of routine movements you don’t really think about normally.
So, I sucked it up, shakily confident that the treatments I was getting, plus some time would make me feel better. Eventually they started to – hell, I’m even on the computer writing this out! I am very much looking forward to getting back to it – I have a spin to complete, a pair of socks on hold, and a quilt that has been crying out to be started. What I will do though is remind myself to take it slow, and if I start getting physical symptoms not to just push through it (I’m bad at that), but to take it easy.
Sometimes if you want to make the stuff, you have to not make the stuff.