The Po Show

Bad Brain Syndrome

I don't feel too well.

It started while I was in CA last week, and I just sort of powered through it because I was having so much fun, and there was no way I was missing out on that fun. But from the second day I was there, I started feeling really dizzy and disoriented. I chalked it up to jet lag (what with with leaving the house at 5:30AM and flying across the country, having a big family dinner, then staying up till 11:00, or 2:00AM EST, then getting up in the middle of the night because my grandniece was crying and wanted to go home). That was on top of the extreme exhaustion I was already suffering from having not slept the night before we travelled (since Matthew woke up at 11:00PM and never went back to sleep). ANYWAY, I was understandably tired.

I blamed that exhaustion for the hair-raising drive home I went through after a fabulous girls' night out in Pasadena. I only had one drink at dinner, hours before the end of the evening, and felt okay as I was leaving, but once I started down the freeway, it was like I'd been lobotomized. I couldn't feel my hands on the wheel. My vision was, not blurry, but distorted, like looking through choppy water. My heart rate shot up and I started to panic, and my senses got even more distorted. I realized that driving was not the safest thing to be doing at that moment, and thought of pulling over, but I knew it really wasn't going to get better. I didn't need more coffee, or a breather; I needed to get home. So I shook my head and turned up the radio and tried singing really loudly till my throat was hoarse. I chewed three pieces of gum at once, to try and still the tremor in my jaw. I clutched the wheel so that I could feel my hands, and I stayed in the far right lane. It was absolutely harrowing, and I felt like cars were speeding past me at 100 miles per hour.

Two days later, Tessa and I went to Disneyland. We had a marvelous time, as we always do when we go there by ourselves. But I was struck by bouts of dizziness throughout the day, and I dreaded when I would have to drive home. It was not as bad as the previous drive, as it wasn't quite dark yet, but it was bad enough. The following day, I had to drive myself and the kids down to Long Beach and back, an hour and a half drive, and the dizziness hit me even in the full light of day.

Today, I started out tired because Matthew was up in the middle of the night again, and I never really went back to sleep. As soon as he was out the door to the bus, I headed to the couch and took a two-hour-long nap. Me and naps, we go way back. I love my naps. I'm one of those people who can grab a ten minute cat nap and feel really refreshed. But when I woke up at 11:00, I felt awful: incredibly dizzy and out of it, and vaguely nauseous. I took a shower and had a double espresso, and an additional two hours later I still felt terrible.

I had to run to the grocery store for a few things, and as I was driving, I started to feel that dissociative feeling again, like my hands and my head were not connected. I felt like cars in the lanes next to me were drifting out of their lanes, coming too close, and then I'd realize that they were not. I clutched the steering wheel again, trying to hold on.

So yeah, I'm sure by this point you're all yelling at me through the monitor: "GO TO THE DOCTOR!!" I'd be yelling the same thing, from the second paragraph, if I were you. But what am I supposed to say? "My brain appears to not be working, and I can't feel my hands when I drive. And all the other cars are driving too close to me, and are passing me way too fast." What is my GP supposed to do with that information? Do I need an optometrist? An opthamologist? A neurologist? Is it my allergies (I'm not congested at all, thanks to all my lovely allergy meds, but that could explain the dizziness)?

I think that for some reason, my brain is just on the fritz right now.