Why Dizziness Is Still a Medical Mystery (newyorker.com)

I had vertigo recently and the author perfectly describes it.

“In benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, crystals in the inner ear canals become loose” was the same explanation I received in the ER.

As I was reading the story, I thought "that sounds like vestibular migraine", which turned out to be the diagnosis. It took me years to get that diagnosis myself, even though I'd received a diagnosis of migraine auras decades before. Apparently putting 2 and 2 together isn't always easy. My symptoms aren't usually as bad as the author's, but can nevertheless be pretty annoying. Especially when I didn't know what was going on ... Doctors didn't know what was going on either, which resulted in much anxiety (of the "is this MS?"-variety).

I hope this article can help others towards a diagnosis.

> and collected seven millilitres of my tears.

Can you really collect half a table spoon of tears from tear ducts? How much tears are in there?

> and collected seven microlitres of my tears.

Perhaps milliliters was a typo later corrected

> An earlier version of this article misstated the unit of measurement used in the collection of tears.