The Dizzy Disease
When Your World Starts To Spin
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
It felt like a small-scale earthquake, the kind that used to stir the adrenelin when I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, the kind followed by a smile of relief. But I was standing on parking lot asphalt in Florida when it happened. An educated American is said to have about 50,000 words on tap, many of them with a few variations, as in look, looked, looking. I’ve written millions of them, recycling those words during my seven decades at one keyboard or another. My parents would have been happier if I’d bought a baseball bat, but at age 12 I bought my first typewriter, a used Royal portable. A couple of years after that the author Philip Wylie invited me to his home. He was rapping out the final words of "Generation of Vipers," his most famous book, and he was doing it on an electric typewriter. I had never seen one until that memorable moment. It took me much of a lifetime to work through millions of words before reaching olivopontocerebellar, the form of ataxia (OPCA) that surprised me as I stood in the parking lot of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Orlando, Florida. It was like a minor earth tremor, the kind I’d felt from time to time on the Big Island. But Orlando had no molten magma pushing its way underground. I was chatting with friends, who saw me stumble and sway like a flimsy flagpole in a high wind. Nothing to it, I
thought. I’d been using a walking stick for 20 years. But I mentioned it the next time I saw my family doctor. "You’re getting older," he said. I couldn’t argue about that because I was around 70. The doctor told me it is not uncommon for people my age to get a bit rickety and to feel dizzy. But I didn’t feel dizzy, exactly. I felt unsteady and it was getting harder to walk along the sidewalk without suddenly lurching off the side. I brought it up again when I saw my cardiologist, who was treating me for a long-time problem with a valve that made me think of those old wineskins mentioned in the Bible. The heart specialist said the same thing my family doctor had. There was more staggering once in a while, and a fuzzy head that seemed more like a nasty hangover than a sign of getting older. I had stopped drinking and smoking many years before...
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Dizzy diseases make people lurch, slide and tumble -- and they make people anxious. They may be part of Parkinsonism, Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), Olivopontocerebellar Atrophy (OPCA) or something else altogether. They're often hard to diagnose. This compelling account of life with a "dizzy disease" is an easy-to-read treasure of information and hope for victims and their families.
About the Author
A. E. P. (Ed) Wall knows about OPCA because he has it, and he knows how to tell you about it because he's a journalist. Ed is former managing editor of the Honolulu Advertiser, former editor in chief of the National Catholic News Service, author of The Spirit of Cardinal Bernardin, contributor to managzines and newspapers, member of the National Press Club, Overseas Press Club, Chicago Headline Club and Society of Professional Journalists. He has won numerous awards.