Dizzy

I've noticed that while I've mentioned dizzy spells, I've never talked about them in detail. While recovering from my second operation, for the first few days I noticed that when i got up i'd be dizzy for a while and would often have to sit back down until the sensation passed and I could try again. This only lasted a few days, and was chalked up to being a side effect of the operation.
Several months passed, and I was enjoying my recovery. I was at the point where I was playing sport again, and exercising with friends. Every Wednesday morning I'd meet some friends at a local beach, and we'd run a self-organised boot-camp style fitness session. I really enjoyed these for the variation, the scenery and the company. One morning though, after completing a particularly tough set of sand sprints I got dizzy, my vision darkened and I had to sit down. The feeling passed after a minute or so and I continued on with some light exercise, attributing the episode to dehydration and exercising on an empty stomach.
A week or so later it happened again. And then the strange thing happened. I was getting the symptoms at strange times - most commonly after very intense exercise, but other times after drinking alcohol, having a heavy meal or just getting up. Sometimes the symptoms would vary, and I'd get tingling in my arms or a ringing in my ears. During some of my worst episodes I'd feel like I couldn't move my limbs, or my vision would grow so dark I could barely see in front of me. I still recall one episode where I was working in Melbourne and had walked from the hotel into work early and was trying to have a conversation with a colleague in the next cubicle despite barely being able to see him.

The most frustrating thing about all this was that it occured inconsistently. Sometimes I would go weeks without any issues, at other times I'd have several days in a row of intense symptoms. Because of this, I'd often put of going to the doctor. when I finally did go, my GP ordered a whole raft of tests. Blood sugar? Fine. Cholestorol? Fine. Kidney function? Fine. Liver function? (Surprisingly) fine. Blood pressure? Fine - in both arms nonetheless. ECG? All clear. As I was visiting neurosurgeon soon after, my GP handballed over to him on the suspicion it had something to do with my neck. My neurosurgeon passed me on to a cardiologist to make sure I had nothing wrong with my heart, and on came another round of tests. Another ECG. An ultrasound of my heart. A heart stress test on a treadmill. All came up clear - it looks like I was in another one of my 'clear' spells. In desperation for some sort of result, they even gave me a portable ECG to wear while I played touch footy. No dice - everything was fine.

Returning to my follow up appoinment with the cardiologist, he told me it was most likely my blood pressure was having problems regulating itself due to damage to the associated nerve centres in my spine. This was causing me to have the bouts of low blood pressure. He gave me a list of things likely to trigger an episode (exercise, heat, alcohol, heavy meals, sitting on stools, getting up quickly, etc) and all of sudden, looking back, what had seemed like a series of random events followed a pattern. The funny bit followed - he gave me the opposite advice of most of his patients: increase my salt intake and drink more caffeine. That and keep my fluid levels up. Because I'm young and active, the salt and caffeine help keep my blood pressure up and don't substantially add to my current risk of heart disease. This was great news, as I now knew what I could do to avoid the onset of an attack, and what measures I could take to reduce its intensity.

All of this brings me back to today. Since my lst op, I've been having dizzy spells pretty regularly, nearly on a daily basis, and affecting me all day sometimes. It'll be interesting to see what the doctor says about it whe I visit him next week. Here's hoping it's temporary...