Doctors said her vertigo would never go away. Luckily, she
refused to believe it.
by Randall Fitzgerald
Since childhood, Quinn Daly had radiated vitality and
health. Every weekday at five in the morning, she went to the
gym for a vigorous two- or three-hour workout before walking
to her job at a public relations firm in San Francisco.
Personable and outgoing, the 28-year-old possessed the energy
and stamina of a natural athlete. Relaxation for her was the
seven-mile hike she took, often alone, nearly every weekend in
the Marin County, California mountains-a ritual she treasured
as her "time to think about life and talk to God."
The morning after one such hike in July 1998, Daly's life
spun completely out of control. While still half asleep, lying
on her stomach, she turned her face to one side and felt a
spinning sensation inside her head. She opened her eyes in
alarm. The room around her was whirling as if she were trapped
on a carnival ride, and no matter how hard she tried to focus,
she couldn't control the sensation. She struggled out of bed
and tried to stand but immediately collapsed to the floor. She
had lost all sense of balance, and waves of nausea began to
sicken her. She grabbed for the phone.
"Something is wrong," she told the 911 operator. "I need
help."
Emergency medical technicians arrived and listened to her
describe her symptoms. "You probably have an inner ear
infection," one of them said. He gave her Sudafed for the
infection and another drug for dizziness. She took both and
promptly threw up.
Several hours later, a friend stopped by Daly's apartment
and found her passed out. The friend rushed her to a hospital,
and there, too, the physician diagnosed an inner ear
infection. He prescribed Valium and a seasickness medication.
"You'll be fine in a couple of days," he told her.
He couldn't have been more wrong. Over the next three
weeks, not only did Daly's symptoms persist, they intensified.
When the Valium wore off, the vertigo returned with a
vengeance, and along with it came an incapacitating nausea.
She couldn't drive a car, exercise, go to work, or focus on
television or computer screens. With her depth perception
warped, she often banged her shoulders against doorways and
sustained painful bruises. Fear and anxiety became constant
companions as Daly felt her body beginning to deteriorate from
a lack of exercise and an inability to keep food down.
At this point, Daly's mother stepped in and got a
recommendation for a respected ear, nose, and throat
specialist in San Francisco, who put Daly through a series of
hearing, balance, and brain tests. In one, as she lay hooked
up to electrodes, cold and then hot water were poured into her
ears to set off the vertigo and measure the activity of her
brain stem. She cried during this procedure and begged the
doctors to stop.
"I was terrified they would find something wrong with my
brain," she says. "I had this fear that I had brain cancer.
But the doctor said I had a very severe form of inner ear
disorder. He called it extreme labyrinthitis and said it was a
virus that had damaged the tissue of my inner ear. He said no
medication could cure it. No surgery could fix it. I would
just have to live with it."
For someone as energetic and active as Daly had been, the
thought of losing control over her life and being forced to be
sedentary sent her into a spiral of despair. During a visit
from her family, she saw herself through their eyes-and hit
bottom. "We were walking down the street, and I had to go very
slowly, one step at a time," she says. "I moved like an old
person, and that scared the heck out of my family. Plus, I had
lost 15 pounds. They were shocked at how fragile and desperate
I had become."
Still, she refused to accept her diagnosis and enlisted
family and friends to help her research vertigo. At one point
she saw a family friend, a chiropractor visiting from Los
Angeles, who said he had heard of similar symptoms in relation
to an upper back problem. He gave her an adjustment and she
felt better, but the dizziness returned after a few days.
However, the brief relief she had gotten gave her hope, so
when a friend recommended she try Rolfing, which she knew was
some type of bodywork, she agreed.
This time she hit pay dirt. Marc Weill, a practitioner in
San Francisco, said he didn't feel the need to check Daly's
ears because he had seen this condition before and was
convinced it originated in her back, not her inner ear. He
examined her with a thermal imaging camera; sure enough, he
found her neck inflamed, a condition that had developed over
time, he said, and was aggravated by her intense physical
activity. Eventually, the inflammation caused the muscles
between her shoulder blades to constrict, he said, compressing
nerves in the area and leading to her loss of balance.
Rolfers believe that by releasing tension in the muscles
and fascia (the tissue that envelops each muscle), they can
ease pain by restoring the body's natural balance. That's
basically what Weill did for Daly. He manipulated her shoulder
girdle to release the muscle spasm and worked his way up into
her neck. Daly says it felt like a deep tissue massage. He
also explained that poor nutrition and dehydration might have
contributed to her condition.
Blood tests enabled him to assess her chemistry and
prescribe mineral supplements he hoped would reduce the
swelling, repair the tissue damage, and boost her immune
system. Immediately after the first Rolfing session, Daly
noticed that her vertigo and nausea had lifted. Two days later
she had a second session and left Weill's office not only
symptom-free, but feeling as if she had reclaimed her
body.
"I walked down the street and realized that the way I was
moving felt normal again," she says. "I cried the whole way
home."
Four years have passed, and Daly is still feeling great. In
fact, she is stronger than ever before, though she's scaled
back her workouts to avoid overtaxing her body. And based on
Weill's advice, she takes a variety of mineral supplements
every day. The energy boost she gets from all of this has been
profound. "My whole life has changed for the better," she
says.
Randall Fitzgerald is a freelance writer in northern
California.
