poked with a sharp stick

[zero_gravity]

I got poked with a Sharp Stick for not posting... in weeks.  How did *that* happen?

might have something to do with Very Limited access to the net now on weekends and evenings. 
Actually, you can pretty much bet I'm not online at night.  There's a few reasons.
I've got a few issues with my laptop - mostly the fact that it is almost completely FULL

Comments

[mattshortforbob]

So, I'm not a doctor, but I can pretend to play one on TV, if you like.

Vertigo = suckage. More medically precise: vertigo is the sensation of everything around you spinning; dizziness is the sensation of you feeling wobbly yourself. A good check is to get someone to gaze romantically into your eyes while it's happening -- if your eyes are twitching, it's vertigo (b/c the twitching is your eyes trying to track the moving room that isn't actually moving). Annoyingly, vertigo can be caused by all sorts of things, generally either untreatable or very bad. The best option is Benign Positional Vertigo, which is generally short-lived and often triggered by movement or position (hence the name); that can be dealt with by quick, unpleasant movements that "reset" your internal gyroscope...

I started to get a headache too and the typical dizziness
... However, sounds like you might have the evil that I have, namely bouts that occur due to other crap, like stress and/or illness.

How are you as a traveller, in general? Since you're prone to headaches/migraines, maybe you've got Crappy Sinus/Inner Ear Shit Syndrome.

Sometimes i get moments of spinning dizziness but they are very, very rare
Er, wait, I'm confused. So maybe you're usually just dizzy, then? "Spinning dizziness" = vertigo? Not sure.

[zero_gravity]

ah!
"vertigo is the sensation of everything around you spinning; dizziness is the sensation of you feeling wobbly yourself."

see i didn't really get the difference until now. (thus the last statement that confused you... i think at those times i'm feeling like i'm going to fall over because everything is spinning ?). In those rare cases I don't think anything is a trigger (Except maybe low blood sugar?) - certainly nothing around me is moving - I'm usually at work just sitting here doing what i usually do.

I think it was - in this case then - vertigo at the movie. I felt like i was about a fraction of a second late in the tracking. as you said... like my internal gyroscope was being reset too often. Next time I'll have to ask theBad to look into my eyes more often.

I actually have no problems traveling. Only with watching things on a screen like the hand-held cam, or the occasional video game. I'm sure if I watched BSG on a larger screen I'd get vertigo too.

the headache dizziness... that could be actual me feeling wobbly. The headaches - migraines - are usually linked to changes in pressure for me.

[mattshortforbob]

I didn't get the difference until I saw a doctor about it. "You've got vertigo" was a bit of a surprise diagnosis, I admit. Anyway, I was wondering if low blood sugar was a trigger for me, too. (Said doctory types wanted me to keep a log and look for patterns.) It turns out vertigo *can* be diet related, which means you've got an exotic-sounding pain-in-the-arse called Meniere's disease. (Or, in my case, "atypical Meniere's", which is fancy doctor-speak for "you're fucked, mate".) Anyway, the basic gist, as I understand it, is that the inner ear fluid gets out of whack if your salt levels change too much. So dehydration can do it. Low blood sugar...? Maybe??? Oh, and drinking a bit too much... yeah, that's bad.

certainly nothing around me is moving
That's perfectly normal. When I said BPV is triggered by movement, I meant a certain movement of your head, like rolling over onto your left side in bed, or whatever. Can also be a certain position, like sitting at a computer in a specific posture. Meniere's is diet/body chemistry triggered. And atypical Meniere's is ... who the fuck knows -- when you face South on a Thursday while Scorpio is in the Ascendant and Uranus is retrograde at Midheaven. Or, in my case, I think, stress/tiredness/low immune system. (Why? Buggered if I know.)

like my internal gyroscope was being reset too often
Well, strictly speaking, it just got reset (incorrectly) once. Which is actually why movement is often not needed -- noone's completely sure what the deal is, but essentially it's a neurological problem where your brain is no longer sure which way level is; dizziness from movement is just the inner ear fluid sloshing about (so the brain's a bit confused briefly until it settles). The eye tracking is your brain trying to compensate for the incorrect "level", like driving a car with wonky alignment -- you have to keep pulling in one direction to fix the car's tendency to pull the other way. So the fix (in some cases) is essentially to fling your head around in certain ways to get all the inner ear fluid sloshing around like crazy, then when you sit still the fluid settles and the brain goes "ah, right, that's level, then" and you're reset correctly. Problem is, if it isn't BPV, doing that just makes you want to puke.

If you're a decent traveller, then your inner ear is probably just fine and dandy. In which case, I'd expect your problem with movies/videogames may not actually be vertigo. But maybe this time something else was in play and the movie just aggravated it.

Maybe. I dunno. Remember, I'm just pretending to play a doctor on TV.