• Mood: troubled

Stop the world, I want to get off

I have no idea what started this, but: when I woke up this morning, I immediately had to lie back down--things started spinning downwards to the left, and I've been having the same kind of dizzy spell on and off all day long. It's accompanied by severe nausea, probably because it's like having the universe yanked out from under you (from the lefthand side). I leaned down to get something out of the crisper for lunch and nearly keeled over, as a matter of fact. Is it a sinus-related inner ear thing? I have been sneezing a lot lately, which could be spring allergies. I don't know--all I know is, it can stop any damn time now, because I've had to totter around all day gripping the furniture with both hands and with my cell phone always in my pocket in case I Fell Down and Couldn't Get Up.

ETA, from particle_person: "Google to the rescue. It's called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV)."

Meanwhile, my poor frail grandmother's shingles are a source of constant, pitiful misery to her. I don't know what I thought shingles were--maybe like hives, only not? Maybe that was my impression?--but as Sister Girl put it, "It's more like a light case of leprosy." I mean, yes, I know that it's a resurgence of the chicken pox, I know all of that, but I didn't know it was so horrible. My mother and my aunt are having to take turns fixing meals for her because she can't get up and do it for herself--they're also having to administer the necessary pills, because my poor grandmother is so out of it (fever, I think?) that she keeps talking about how she hasn't taken "all eight pills" today. Never mind that she's only supposed to take five. They actually had to take the pills away so they could dole them out one at a time, lest she take a couple dozen without knowing what she was doing. My cousin (she and my aunt live directly across the street from Grandma, by the way) can't even get anywhere near her because she's never had the chicken pox. And Grandma won't be able to come for Easter lunch because she's so ill, and I know how much family dinners mean to her.

Sigh.