Well I've been looking around the forum and haven't found anything like my situation. So I figured I'll post to see if anyone knows of a possible explanation for what may be causing my dizziness.
It first started 8 years ago when I was 15. It was a perfectly normal day. I was in reasonably good shape and ate well at this point played sports and stayed active. I was on my way to soccer practice when I began feeling as though I had been spun on a merry-go-round. I thought I was car sick or something. But when I got out of the car I had a feeling of unbalance as though my legs couldn't hold me up and I was going to pass out. So that night I went to the clinic and they checked my blood pressure and ran the test for heart rhythm and determined I was okay to go home. I went to sleep that night assuming I'd feel better in the morning. I didn't. This was the beginning of an awful two years of my life. I visited every doctor imaginable...neurology, ent, cardiology, nephrology, psychiatry. No one could give me an answer. I found a doctor eventually who is an otolaryngology guy. He told me in boys there is sometimes unexplainable dizziness and he believes it has to do with men's brains growing until they're 25. Since those two yearseparate I have had extended periods of having no trace of dizziness to laying down all day and having someone help me get from my bed to the bathroom. It's really frustrating. But recently it has come back and it feels different. It's like sudden feeling of dropping. I told my GP about it and they thought nothing of it. Or so it seemed. Now I'm going to the GP again to see where we go from here. Now as I note I do have anxiety disorder in the form of ocd and also depression. My psychiatrist doesn't think it's anxiety.
Clearly, your first attack was vertigo in one direction. Please list all the tests and results so far (audiometry, caloric test, examination of the eyes). Are there other symptoms (ringing in the ears, hearing loss). Are these episodes triggered by head movement or are they spontaneous. Have you tried medication, and has any worked?
Eleftherios S. Papathanasiou, PhD, FEAN
Clinical Neurophysiologist
Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology
I have had MRI of the sinuses, MRI of the eighth nerve, vision tests, ultrasound of the heart, EKG, audiometry test, caloric test all shown as normal. The feeling is spontaneous but tends to only occur when sitting or standing or laying down with my eyes closed. No doctor I have found yet can explain it. The only medication that has helped is lorazepam. Brain growth is the best explanation I have, and hoping when I'm 25 it'll be done growing and the dizziness will stop.
I have not heard anything about brain growth being a factor in my experience.
I am surprised, although I have heard it before, for a patient like yourself to go the ER and not have the eye movements checked. There still exist ER departments that are not aware of vestibular disorders.
The normal MRI is very good!
One explanation I can offer is a condition that has been discovered failry recently-otolithic hydrops. This would explain the normal audio (which checks the cochea) and the calorics (which checks the horizontal semicircular canal). Your sudden feelings of dropping indicates otolith dysfunction.
My advice to you is to find a clinic (either ENT or Neurotology) that specifically performs a test called Vestibular Evoked Myogenic Potentials (VEMPs). This test will pick it up if it is what I expect it is.
Eleftherios S. Papathanasiou, PhD, FEAN
Clinical Neurophysiologist
Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology