Waking up on December 26th with a foggy head and a spinning room is certainly not uncommon. Who among us has not felt the consequences of over-indulgence? Christmas Day?
These were my immediate thoughts when I woke up in this state two years ago in my parents' home in Dublin. An hour later, the room continued to spin, nausea increased and it became difficult to stand. So far it's a Christmas hangover. I stayed in bed and waited for everything to settle down. They didn't. Gradually, family members looked into my childhood bedroom and wondered if everything was okay. I can only say that I felt quite strange.
After a couple of hours I thought the worst was over, so I joined my mother, sister and wife in the kitchen. Moments later, they watched helplessly as I vomited into the kitchen sink, and a silent bond formed between them.
The next day this process repeated several times, so I went to the doctor. The general practitioner made a diagnosis case of dizziness: Not any Hitchcock-induced visions, but dizziness and nausea usually caused by inner ear problems. Often this only lasts a few seconds, but longer incidents can occur. I was prescribed medication to restore order.
What was even stranger was that at the time I was working as a producer on a BBC Sounds documentary podcast called Havana Helmet Clubinvestigation Havana syndrome – a 2016 case of mysterious traumatic brain injuries involving CIA agents and U.S. embassy employees in Cuba and beyond.
I spent the previous year researching all aspects of this strange story, starting with the many symptoms that patients began to experience seemingly out of nowhere. Most reported hearing high-pitched sounds in their Havana homes, followed by severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and ultimately long-term brain injury. There were speculations about Russian microwave weapons and jokes about the “perfect concussion.” Politicians, scientists, diplomats and security experts debated this endlessly. Some claimed that people were simply imagining it or were overreacting to the sound of crickets—suggestions that the victims were quite hostile to. Doctors explained that even if there were no guns, other triggers – physical and mental – could cause a dramatic reaction in the brain.
Shortly before my own incident, I was listening to a colleague interview a neurologist. The doctor was talking about how when you become aware of a certain part of your body, your mind may become overly focused on it. For example, if you have been told that you have a family history of heart disease, you may suddenly begin to notice that you feel out of breath when walking up the stairs. For several weeks after listening to this story, I sometimes noticed slight pinching sensations in my head when bending over or standing up quickly.
In a state of dizziness, I tried to explain all this to the doctor. I did not claim that I was involved in a dastardly espionage plot. Moreover, I wondered if I was imagining myself to be sick. Can something a person read about take over his body? When I finished this speech, she looked at me politely, said, “Yes, yes,” and explained that this was not an unusual disease. The pills should help in a week, she told me, and if it happens again, I'll need vestibular physical therapy.
Of course, she was right, and everything went relatively smoothly. But it got me thinking about everyone involved in the Havana Syndrome case. In addition to the need for care, many were overcome by the need to find out what had happened to them. My illness was minor, but I saw how easily this kind of thinking can take over when you are suddenly thrown off track. The list of causative factors for dizziness and vestibular disorders includes everything from lying down to standing up to air travel and much more in between. The most unpleasant thing for those over 40 is “becomes more common with age”. We are where we are.
Instead of going down the rabbit hole, I decided it was better to just be grateful that my bout of ill health happened that day. after my big Christmas dinner – even if the medication did mean I could only drink non-alcoholic “champagne” on New Year's Eve. Perhaps a fate worse than vertigo itself.
