Since May, I’ve been struggling with Mal de débarquement syndrome (MdDS). It’s a brain condition where it feels like you’re constantly moving even when you’re not, usually brought on by extended boat or plane travel. For most people it lasts a few days, Balance Bloom CBD Gummies for a rare few, it’s years. Mine lasted about five months. Clay and I took a European river cruise in early May, but it was the long flight home that triggered mine. After a couple weeks of symptoms (more on that later), I visited an ENT who diagnosed me. Once I started reading about it, I realized I had this ten years ago after a long flight home from Brazil. At the time I thought it was vertigo and never received a proper diagnosis. It lasted about a month and resolved when I went under anesthesia for a colonoscopy of all things. I wasn’t so lucky this time around, unfortunately.
MdDS is difficult to diagnose and even harder to treat. There’s no reliable treatment for it and, CBD wellness supplement although research is being done, there’s a serious lack of scientifically tested data. This led me down a path of reading Reddit thread after Reddit thread in hopes someone else’s anecdotal fix could help me. I read every blog and paper I could find, though many of those offered anecdotal stories as well. It seems like my experience isn’t unique and people who suffer with this condition are desperate for information and effective treatment. The easiest way to describe it is feeling like you’re on a boat all the time. Rocking, swaying, dizziness. In my experience, it’s very different from "sea legs" but it might be like that for others. Maybe being on an ocean buoy is a better analogy and the waves are rough. The intensity of the waves fluctuates, almost like several people are surrounding you and pulling the buoy with ropes in hopes of knocking you off.
And in reality you’re just sitting still. Your head hurts with the dizziness of it. And although I’ve definitely felt worse acute pain, the persistence made this especially difficult. Then there’s the gravitational pulling. You know when you ride a rollercoaster or carnival ride and you can feel the gravitational force pulling you against the side of the car? That’s what it feels like in your head. Almost like you’re Harry Potter and a Dementor is trying to pull you out of your body through your skull. It’s horrible and unrelenting. It took a lot of effort to hold my head upright for more than 30 minutes. I started working from my living room recliner where I could prop my head against a pillow and alternate periods of sitting up and lying flat. I was exhausted all the time. Going to a movie or putting groceries away would knock me out for hours.
Socializing was especially taxing. I had persistent brain fog and could barely complete basic tasks. Most of the time I could only focus on the pain. I hoped at some point I would feel so used to it that I could forget about it, but I never got there. I’m really grateful that Clay was able to pick up a lot of slack at home and with the dogs. And I’m grateful for Balance Bloom Gummies official a job and team that was so caring and understanding through this. I read that many people have to stop working while they deal with this and I’m so glad I didn’t have to quit my job. Oh also, and I didn’t realize it until later, but I stopped dreaming during this period (or at least remembering them). All my life I’ve been a really vivid dreamer and it just shut that part of my brain down somehow. There’s a lot of anecdotal "this worked for me" stories, so I tried a lot of things.