Yesterday, I was awakened in the early hours by a nauseating bout of violent vertigo. Having been dead asleep seconds before, this was alarming; I reached for my husband and called his name, but he was even more drenched with sleep and wouldn’t be roused. Then, in under a minute, the spinning stopped, and I was aligned again.
And I fell back to sleep. Deep in my sleepy brain, I concluded that this was a dream.
A couple of hours later, the room spun again. With my eyes closed, I felt the bed pitch and the ceiling transform into a moving Escher painting. A dreadful nausea struck my body, but I was afraid to stand up to go to the bathroom. My head hurt. I stayed horizontal, the spinning subsided, and I ventured vertically into the bathroom to pee. I dropped back into bed slowly, took a Benadryl, and went back to sleep.
Is it weird that I went back to sleep? It seemed like a refuge from the spinning, and I really hoped I was just dreaming.
When it was finally daylight, I opened my eyes to a still room. My perfectly quiet sleeper Tim was in those early morning stages of waking up, so I told him what was going on. As I shifted to look at him, the room spun again, and I lurched. I was gonna heave.
I’m on day two of the spins. It’s better today, but I’m not tracking very well. Research indicates I probably have a viral middle ear infection, which makes perfect sense because I’ve been having ear pain. Benadryl is my friend, so I’m loopy. I’ll eventually call a doctor. I’m not stubborn about that, we just have been tapped out by Christmas and have no extra funding for a co-pay.
I really only wrote this so I could use the line “My Own Private Vertigo.”
Meg Currell 
Thanks for sharing your vertigo experience. The weird thing is I think I just experienced vertigo just yesterday morning. While driving. The world suddenly seemed to want to rotate. Started as a slight lightedheadedness, then just seemed to come on strong. Since I was on a busy road, I worried that it was just going to get worse and worse and I could cause an accident. I decided to turn into a parking lot and sit till it stopped but the opportunity never came up. Or I wasn’t in a good frame of mind to take action. So, I kept driving and kept hoping it wouldn’t get worse. Fortunately, it didn’t. But it remained intensely with me for quite a while before finally relenting. Of course, I worried about what the cause could be: stroke, aneurism, the start of one neuro-disease or another. But as we were busy getting ready for our last holiday get-together, I put it out of my mind. So weird that you bring it up in your blog. Have you had this before?
I have not. Tim has, but more like yours (awake and vertical) less like mine. Apparently my type is commonly ear related, which makes sense with my ear issues. But we are awash in Arnold impersonations: “it’s not a tumor!”