Touch of Vertigo

A dizzy dose of interestingness for your Thursday

In January 2020 I returned from a New Year’s spent in Rome with a terrible awful sickness, which had me on the edge of wondering if I should go to the hospital because I was having a hard time breathing. I recovered, three weeks later, and by then, the world was starting to talk about a little thing called coronavirus. But I was fighting a new malady: full-blown vertigo.

Now if you’ve never had vertigo, it’s an awful thing, generally caused by little crystals in your ear that get dislodged and move around in your ear canal, sending your world spinning. To get rid of it there are a series of maneuvers you can do to try and re-lodge those crystals back in place. That’s what I did in 2020 to get me back on track.

Fast forward to 2022 and I became sick again for the holidays, a bad head cold that remained a bad head cold 10 negative COVID tests later. I moved past that, but just as I started to feel better, I also felt worse. For the last week, I’ve felt a bit like I might spin into vertigo if I turn my head wrong.

I’d had vertigo a couple of times in the last 15 years, usually from too loud music at a show (I wear earplugs now!), but vertigo after being sick, twice? Of course, I turned to the Google. And in doing so, I learned that this little affliction of mine (a type of inner ear infection) has the coolest name.

Labyrinthitis. That’s because our inner ear looks like a little labyrinth (although I think it looks more like a snail shell).

Salman Rushdie once said that:

“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”

It explains it perfectly. I loved being dizzy when I was a kid. I like the Tilt-a-Whirl and the Gravitron. I love to spin around in office chairs.

A photo I took in 2006 at MassMoCA from the exhibit by CARSTEN HÖLLER - AMUSEMENT PARK

But now? I really don’t want my world to spin so much!

Vertigo or Spellbound?

How many of you thought of Hitchcock’s masterpiece when you read the title of this post? It got me thinking too, but my head went back to my most recent obsession—Salvador Dalí, who is a character in a wacky book I wrote that is also a retelling of Hades and Persephone set in Italy, in 1949, in a garden of monsters. I know, I know, that’s a lot to wrap your head around, but when the time comes to tell you more, I promise, it will be a wild ride worth taking.

But back to Hitchcock and Dalí. Did you ever see the movie Spellbound? Well, if you did, you got to see two geniuses at work.

But, like so many great movie ideas, 17 of the 20 minutes of Dalí’s vision were left on the cutting room floor.

A Cure for Vertigo

In case you were wondering, yes I did see a doctor about my labyrinthitis. For the most part, there isn’t much doctors can do. Because my illness was viral, I have to wait for the infection to subside. Antihistamines help, as does a cheap over-the-counter drug called Meclizine (not to be confused with mescaline!) which masks the feeling of dizziness until I heal up, so at least I won’t have bed spins or feel like I might fall over if I tilt my head wrong.

It had me wondering what people in history did for vertigo. The maneuvers available to us for realigning the crystals are fairly new—they only really identified what vertigo is in the 1950s. I can’t imagine how hard it might have been to live with vertigo for days or weeks on end with no idea what it was.

Perhaps the ancient Romans would have gone to a place of healing and prayed to Asclepius, the god of healing (and he loved to heal with snakes!). I’m especially excited by the discovery of 24 bronze statues in the Tuscan town of San Casciano dei Bagni (San Casciano of the Baths). The statues, mostly of gods of healing, are stunning.

Bronze heads predating the Roman Empire discovered in Italy's San Casciano dei Bagni. (via Yahoo News)

The statues were found with evidence that the Etruscans and Romans worshipped together in this place of healing, despite being at war, causing historians to rethink some of what we believed about these ancient people. To see more about this incredible find, you can head here.

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Not Dizzy, just Delightful

I’ll leave you today with a few things I’ve been enjoying:

Bronte Pistachio Creme (Eataly) Dreamy on toast!

I just snagged an advanced copy of fellow historical fiction author, Heather Webb’s STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT, about the love affair of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner. I’m SO excited to read it! She says it’s a really wild ride. It’s not out till March, but you can pre-order your copy now.

Some of you might know I’m an avid gamer. My latest obsession is a roguelite city builder, Against the Storm.

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In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing some new recipes here, but if you want to dive into the world of Renaissance or Ancient Roman food, you can download my free digital cookbooks here and here.

And if you haven’t read THE CHEF’S SECRET or FEAST OF SORROW, click the links to learn where to buy your copy!

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