Tag Archives: vertigo

06.23.26
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Seconds

Everybody loves a surprise, right? Surprises give that insouciant feeling of je ne sais quoi to life.

Surprises come in seconds. 

Last year in a hotel in Bloomington, Illinois, my legs turned to jelly under me. It happened in a second. I grabbed the bathroom sink counter and kept myself from falling on the floor. After a six-hour spinal fusion surgery and twelve weeks of recovery, I was good as new. Almost. 

All from a little surprise that lasted a few seconds. 

Last March 19, at 4:25 p.m., it was time to break off work and watch Jeopardy! I reached for the screen cover to close my laptop, and a great wave of dizziness engulfed me. The screen, with whatever I had written there, spun counterclockwise. I opened my eyes and everything was sideways. I was lying on my side on the floor next to my desk, not knowing what had happened. 

It all happened in a few seconds.

At the emergency room they asked me lots of questions, did a standard neurological exam (“How many fingers am I holding up? . . . Hold your hand up and keep me from pushing it down,” etc.), gave me a CAT scan and an electrocardiogram, and found . . . nothing in particular. “But these things don’t happen for no reason,” said the ER doc. “So I’m making you an appointment with the Faints and Falls Clinic, and I’m ordering a two-day Holter monitor for you.”

A Holter monitor, if you don’t know, is a gizmo they mount on your chest that keeps a continuous EKG record of your heart’s activity for a period of time, in this case, two days. But the two-day Holter showed no significant results, so they gave me a 14-day Holter monitor. Oh, bother. 

The 14-day Holter also showed nothing. So I have since had a cardiac recorder implanted in my chest to keep track of my impulses for the next three or four years.

But—have I mentioned?—this was not all academic. 

Since March 19, I have not driven a car, because you should not drive after an unexplained loss of consciousness. (“Syncope” with an un-silent e is what they call it, I learned at the emergency room.) The Motor Vehicle code says you should not resume driving until 90 days have gone by without a further episode of syncope. 

With all the Holter monitors, and an echocardiogram, and the time between appointments, it was getting close to 90 days since my only bout of syncope. I was ready to start driving again on the 90th day, June 17, five days after my birthday. I was even looking forward to it, because not being able to drive is a drag.

Did I mention my birthday was coming? So I went down to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get my license renewed. 

I couldn’t pass the vision test. That funny little box you look into at the Division of Motor Vehicles—I blew it. The first screen is just a line of type—block letters. Even though my glasses were on, I couldn’t even guess what the letters were. 

So I went to my eye doctor, and I think we’re going to get my license back, but in the meantime, it’s expired. 

It only took two or three seconds to fail the eye test. 

Recently we traveled to Boston. We arrived at Logan Airport, took the shuttle to the Blue Line “T” Station. My wife tripped over the entrance to the T Station and broke her arm in two places. We spent six hours in the ER at Massaachusetts General, a very good hospital.

It only took a second.

Another time measure that becomes relevant, at our time of life, besides the few seconds it takes to receive a new surprise, is the interval between surprises. It’s getting down to a few months, or even a few weeks.

We march on.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

06.22.21
by

Are the Cicadas Singing?

My right ear abandoned its duty forty years ago. All sounds it transmitted became muffled and distant. The diagnosis was hereditary otosclerosis.

X-ray of otosclerosis by Mustafakapadiya, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.

Only the one ear was affected. There was a surgical procedure to correct this condition. The operation, in my case, was a crashing failure. It left me with vertigo, impaired balance, worse hearing in the right ear than before the operation, plus tinnitus—a constant ringing in the ear. 

“vertigo” by pomarc is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The dizziness and loss of balance have subsided over time. The deafness is profound and permanent. And the tinnitus has proven to be lifelong.

Tinnitus greatly burdens some of its sufferers, but with me it’s more a curiosity than a curse. My brain ignores the ringing. Only if I happen to think of it do I hear it. Thus I can summon the sound at will, but it normally sinks below my awareness. 

Except on warm summer evenings. Then, if I am outdoors—which I often am—the high-pitched, droning whine of cicadas is everywhere. Whoever I’m with, I ask them:  “Are the cicadas singing?” 

Even when they’re not singing, my ear tells me they are.

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Cicadas are large, prehistoric-looking insects often called locusts. But true locusts are a kind of grasshopper, and these big, ugly bugs do not much resemble them. Therefore, cicada is the proper term.

Despite its repulsive looks, the cicada is a lovely singer, emitting a shrill chirp that is unmistakable. The sound is made by males in order to attract females. (It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die.) 

These males in their search for mating opportunities rapidly buckle and unbuckle an anatomical structure on their bellies known as a tymbal. They do it so rapidly that the numerous clicks fuse into one whine, which can sound cyclical, rising and falling with monotonous regularity. It’s incredibly loud, especially when thousands or millions of the bugs throb out their urgent pleas all at once. It can drive a hearer crazy.

Magicicada photographed near Chicago in 2007. Uploaded by Nickaleck at English Wikipedia. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5.

Such a thing is especially worrisome in certain years when magicicada—the so-called “seventeen-year locust”—appears. According to Wikipedia, “Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts 2–5 years.” When the nymphs come out of the ground, climb trees, shed their exoskeletons, and emerge as adults, they do so in moderately large numbers. But magicicada takes seventeen years from hatching to adulthood. Most of the magicicada in a region come out in the same year. When they do, their numbers can be staggering.

I first encountered them as a young boy in Streator, Illinois. For a week or two, they were everywhere. I remember striding through them, ankle-deep, at a local park. Then they died off. When the next seventeen-year cycle was complete, I no longer lived there.

Wisconsin’s magicicada swarm is expected to emerge in 2024 here. Since I have been a Badger for about sixty-four years now, I must have gone through three of these events already—but I have no recollection of them. This makes me think the Wisconsin brood is less overwhelming than those farther south.

But some cicadas come out every year, even here in the Great Green North. So don’t be surprised if one evening soon, when we are together, I turn to you with my plaintive query, “Are the cicadas singing?” 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer

Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

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Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois

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