I was just sitting here, reading the Dope, and all of a sudden the room was spinning around, and I had to steady myself by holding on to the table. I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. The whole thing lasted maybe 10 seconds. What the hell happened to me?
IANAD, and there are many types of vertigo but here’s a possibility that most don’t think about.
As pilots, we sometimes have to deal with flicker vertigo often produced by the sun strobing thru propeller blades. IME, this can happen when a failing (and flickering) fluorescent bulb is close, and the main source of light while I’m reading in a room. It’s happened to me once, and was disconcerting. Just a thought.
I get it sometimes, usually when I am in bed. I roll over, and suddenly it feels like the bed has rotated up on its side and I have to hang on for dear life to keep from falling out. I mentioned it to my doctor and he dismissed it as one of the perks of getting old.
That’s the feeling I had… that if I let go, I’d go spinning around with everything else.
I had the same thing about 3 weeks ago (not while reading the Dope 
). It has not repeated. Very weird. COMPLETELY incapacitated for about 3-5 seconds. Possibly some sort of mini-stroke?
I’m obviously not a doctor, but could it be related to your online usage?
I know for me, if I use my phone 'wrong" (scroll too fast for example) I can get dizzy. But it isn’t to the point where I fall over.
I’d get checked for an ear infection, or maybe you have crystals loose in your ear.
WTH, you can have crystals in your ear? Well, I never…
To the OP, I am dizzy headed a bit, during allergy season. I decided it’s fluid in my ear. Allergy meds help. IANAD or any kinda of health care worker, that’s just my experience.
Inner ear
Did you look out the window? Maybe somebody stole your house.
Very unlikely.
Most of the time, vertigo’s triggered by something screwy in the inner ear, which senses balance. Epithelial (skin) cells inside the inner ear sometimes break free and slosh about in the fluid, triggering the nerves that usually fire while in motion, so you end up feeling like the world’s spinning while you’re standing still.
The good news is that it’s completely harmless (as long as you don’t bump into anything). The bad news is, well, modern medicine really doesn’t know how to treat it effectively yet. Some people swear by the Epley Maneuver, but don’t attempt it until a doctor shows you how it’s done.
That’s good to know. I do have crazy bad tinnitus, and wear hearing aids, so my ears are already kind of messed up to begin with.
There are some vertigo maneuvers you can do that might reveal your symptoms and help them. You can look them up, one of them is the Epley maneuver. My Dad had to do one for a few weeks, it started off by making him feel worse but by the time he was finished he felt better. I wouldn’t use them as a substitute for a doctor but it might help in diagnosing a condition.
I’ve had something similar happen to me a couple of times. in each case, it was a result of a recent change in my blood pressure medication. The new dosage worked too well, and when I’d get up out of bed i’d experience a temporary condition of low blood pressure. I’d fall right back onto the bed, but that’s not what it felt like. It felt like the bed rose up and slammed into my back.
No way, I just saw a guy get hauled out of work this morning in an ambulance because he legit thought he was dying. He came back a few hours later and said it was just a crazy case of vertigo. Didn’t get all the details, so I don’t know if he was spinning or what. I just know he was having a hard time breathing and he thought it was a stroke or heart attack or something. Vertigo must be going around today.
My husband had a single instance of vertigo when he was at work about 10 years ago - he suddenly found the room spinning. He works at a school, and they have a nurse, so he decided to go visit her. He had to hang on to the hallway wall on the way to her office. She checked to make sure he wasn’t having a heart attack (he wasn’t) and another co-worker took him to his PCP. The doctor said this can happen without any solid explanation - and it could happen again, or not. Fortunately for him, that was the only episode.
The inner ear is tied into your panic system (is that the right word? Who knows).
So attacks of vertigo can be accompanied by panic attacks and intense anxiety.
If you’ve never had one and don’t know about them, they are terrifying the first time. Panic attacks make you feel like you’re dying anyway, throw unexpected vertigo in the mix and it is scary.