I have heard this complaint many times. Frequently, from someone who was pregnant or just given birth. The story of a woman, I saw recently is very typical.
L was so happy after finally having a baby girl after 2 sons. One morning shortly after coming home with her baby, she woke up with the world spinning. She went to her primary care who sent her to ENT, then neurologist. All MRI's were fine. They told her she had postpartum depression. When she reported that she was not depressed at all, she was dizzy, her doctors just dismissed her.
She happened to find Vision Specialists of Michigan website and then the link to me. I was the closest doc to her in the country. It turns out that she had a decompensated phoria due to the stress of the birth. That means that her eyes were always slightly misaligned but her brain was always able to take the 2 images from the eyes and fuse them together to get one. The stress of giving birth probably took that ability away. Her slightly vertically misaligned eyes lead to her seeing a ghost image because the images were on non corresponding points on her retinas. The eye muscles were trying to fuse the images giving the brain signals of movement but the inner ear signaled no movement. This lead to the dizziness. As soon as we aligned her eyes the dizziness went away. No drugs, no therapy, just glasses.
Tomorrow, I will describe what the ENT's call their Mall patients.
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