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Turn! Turn! Turn!


My labyrinthitis kicked in with a vengeance today, which is something I could do without.

Quite often when it rears its ugly head, it’s the dizziness I notice last and the emotional response I notice first. Around lunchtime today I was overtaken by anxiety. Initially, I assumed this was due to the enormity of what I have to do over the next few days and the more mundane fact that I was waiting for Parcelforce to pick up the parcels I was shipping to Edinburgh. I thought it was just 'The Fear': the moment your body decides to exhibit the nerves you’re subconsciously feeling that haven’t bubbled to the surface yet.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with feeling anxious about the job ahead when you have a lot coming up - that’s natural - but it wasn’t until I walked into town to do some shopping and started having problems coordinating my way past dawdling pedestrians that I realised my head was spinning and that was why I was on edge.

The most frustrating thing about labyrinthitis is it’s very hard to put to bed; when it hits, all you can do is try to gently work your way around it. It’s very tiring and akin to being drunk without any of the positives that may have led to that. It’s often at its worst when you go to bed as lying down accentuates the head-spinning (see: it is like being drunk) and is accentuated by stress and bright lights; even looking at my computer screen as I type this is setting it off.

All I can do is be patient and try not to get too caught up in the symptoms as eventually they will pass; at least I haven’t got anything demanding coming up, like doing a twenty-five day straight at the world’s biggest fringe festival, for example.

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