Have you ever had the misfortune of being hit over the head from behind? That’s what it felt like when I had my first serious vertigo attack. The surprising jolt when it hits has you grabbing onto the nearest object so you don’t fall over. Unfortunately, for me it wasn’t a one-off and started happening more regularly. You can never accurately pick its arrival and you never know where it’s going to take place. But after it hits, you need to wait out hour upon hour of everything spinning madly around you. You try to sit motionless and attempt to focus intently on a fixed object in front of you because any eye or head movement results in the worst nausea and vomiting you’ll experience. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

In early 1997, I’d started suffering some minor dizziness after noticing some tinnitus (buzzing sound) in my left ear. Some increasingly longer dizzy spells at work led me to get some tests, including an MRI to check whether I had any tumours. It was concluded that there was nothing wrong and it might just be an inner ear infection or a virus. But a few weeks later came the sledgehammer hit!

I was at a restaurant with my wife and some friends, enjoying a beautiful mushroom risotto (the significance of this very salty meal will become clear later) when suddenly my head jerked forward and I grabbed the table so I wouldn’t fall off my chair. It was then my world started spinning out of control. I’d never really vomited before, but that night I certainly made up for it, filling several buckets in the doctor’s surgery I ended up at. Anyone who has suffered from vertigo can understand its debilitating nature, but when it lasts hour upon hour, you really do feel desperate and helpless, thinking the rest of your life might be spent in a world that constantly spins.

It actually took another six months of weekly vertigo attacks, nausea, misdiagnosis with ear, nose and throat specialists and feelings of confusion and depression before I got to the bottom of what I had. Luckily, I married into a supportive family of health professionals who asked enough questions and undertook enough research to find out there was a specialist centre at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney that might diagnose and help to treat my problem.

Meniere’s disease

Once I got an appointment with Dr Michael Halmalgyi and his team at RPAH, they were able to diagnose that I had something called Meniere’s disease. It’s defined as “idiopathic syndrome of endolymphatic hydrops” or, in easier-to-understand terms, “episodic vertigo associated with hearing loss, aural fullness and tinnitus”. Although several other disorders can involve episodic vertigo, it is the tinnitus or aural fullness (or both) that must be present and tested on the affected side to formally diagnose Meniere’s.

An uncomfortable testing procedure that included an electronic device and a series of balance and aural fullness tests confirmed I had the disease. The diagnosis was something of a relief because I now knew what I had and what I could do about it. In fact, after they diagnosed me as having “classic” Meniere’s, I initially felt a weird sense of triumph in how special I must be to be diagnosed with “classic” Meniere’s.

This smugness soon left me when they told me there was no known cause and no magical cure. “So, do I have to put up with these vicious vertigo attacks for the rest of my life?” I asked? “It really does depend on how you move forward from here,” was the response from the doctor. “There are several stages to Meniere’s and you will have periods of vertigo attacks, associated nausea and constant tinnitus in the ear, but if managed well, their severity might be a lot less.” He added, “Although there are no guarantees, many Meniere’s sufferers have responded positively to a very low-salt diet with the help of diuretics now and then, and staying as fit and healthy as possible.”