Spinning like it's the 1990s!

07/18/2025

Photo by ibmoon Kim on Unsplash

There was a time, some blurry, reckless chapter, when dizziness was earned.

The kind that came at the end of a long night,

spinning on a bedroom floor, drunk on bad decisions and worse liquor.

It ended with greasy food, laughter too loud, and regret you could sleep off.

Before the spins began, we’d pile into booths at the 24-hour diner, floors sticky with history, linoleum curled at the corners, jukebox long silent but still humming in memory.

The Stretch found its way to our table more often than not, steaming like a dare.

It wasn’t just breakfast, it was a badge of honor:

hash browns and eggs smothered in chili, cheddar cheese melting like surrender,

green peppers and onions tucked in like secrets.

I always told them to hold the peppers.

It arrived hot and heavy on a thick ceramic plate,

sliding across the table like both promise and warning.

We’d dig in with plastic forks, Tabasco at the ready,

hoping that somewhere under all that grease was the cure for the night we’d just lived.

For a moment, it was.

That kind of dizziness came with its own rules.

It was something you could laugh at the next morning, a side effect of being young, bold, and just a little bit dumb.

It passed. Life moved on.

But life has a way of circling back, offering the same sensation in a new, cruel costume.

Now, I live with a different kind of dizzy, one that isn’t earned.

It doesn’t wait for permission. It doesn’t come with music or memory.

It shows up, uninvited and unrelenting, a symptom of chemo, cancer, and a body trying to hold itself together one breath at a time.

This dizziness isn’t a blur from a bottle or a poorly made choice.

It’s sharper. Hungrier.

It doesn’t spin like a carnival ride; it tilts.

It slides the room sideways, soft at first, then urgent.

It folds space like bad origami, walls stretching, corners bending, the floor becoming a wave beneath me.

Sometimes, I can feel it build, like pressure behind my eyes.

The air gets thick.

The world starts to pull away at the edges.

Colors dull. Sound narrows.

Then comes the tone.

Not quite a ringing. Not quite a buzz.

It’s a high, tight frequency, like someone tuning an old TV in the back of my skull.

It hums, piercing but not loud,

as if the room itself has decided to scream in silence.

It coils in my ears and squeezes thought into instinct.

The sound doesn’t startle me anymore.

It announces itself like an old adversary.

I know what it means.

Sit.

Breathe.

Wait.

Other times, there’s no warning.

I stand too quickly, and the world goes soft.

My chest flutters. My knees bend. The light around me takes on water.

I have only moments to find something solid... a chair, a wall, a prayer, before gravity cashes its check.

They call it orthostatic hypotension.

I call it a thief. An MFer.

It steals the little things first, my confidence in standing still, my ability to walk down a hallway without calculation.

It replaces spontaneity with strategy.

Every step becomes a question.

Every turn, a gamble.

Rarely there are the days the sound comes in like a Blackhawk helicopter.

Slow. Rhythmic. Constant.

Not a scream, but a steady thrum I can’t outrun.

It hovers just overhead, chopping the stillness into pieces, the beat echoing in my blood, reminding me how loud silence can be when your body forgets how to stand.

The causes are layered.

Chemo burns through my red blood cells, leaving fewer messengers to carry oxygen to my brain.

Anemia drapes itself over me like a wet blanket.

Dehydration joins the conspiracy, pulling volume from my blood and strength from my muscles.

Appetite is unreliable. Fatigue is dependable.

Dizziness becomes a familiar, uninvited guest.

I manage what I can.

Blood transfusions, bags of red lifeblood swinging like borrowed time.

IV fluids that drip quietly into my veins.

Sips of water when I can.

Bites of food when I must.

Iron. Salt. Protein. Calories.

Not for flavor, but for function.

For balance.

None of it cures the dizziness.

But it steadies the edge.

It buys me another hallway.

Another moment upright.

Another breath without the room turning inside out.

This is what healing looks like now, not bold, not fast, not loud, but quiet, deliberate, slow.

When I sit before the fall, when the pressure lifts,

when the hum fades and the room comes back into focus,

I don’t feel triumphant, just thankful.

I am awarded with a few more steps on my journey.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes,

I drift back to that diner booth,

to the smell of chili and cheese,

to the echo of laughter before the weight of the world ever settled on my shoulders.

Back then, dizziness came with company.

With eggs, bad choices, and the kind of comfort only found on a chipped plate under fluorescent lights.

The Stretch was waiting.

So was recovery, simple, greasy, guaranteed.

Now, the world tilts in quieter ways.

No omelet waits at the end.

But even in this version of vertigo,

there is still something to hold on to.

A wall. A breath. A moment.

Someday, maybe

I'll earn The Stretch again,

extra Tabasco, hold the green peppers.

-C…