Tommy Roe Can Go Fuck Himself

Hello, Hello -- #1045

So I have vertigo now.

I woke up last Sunday with a headache. I didn't think much of it, assuming that it was hangover, because it was Sunday and that's what happens on Sunday. I went about my normal routine of funneling coffee, shoveling eggs down my gullet, and weeping softly as I adjusted my fantasy football roster. Suddenly it hit me. "Wait a minute, I didn't go out drinking last night. This headache might be a sign of some larger internal malfunction."

Because my hypochondria knobs are all set to eleven, I immediately assumed that it was a tumor and started drafting my will. Mom gets my dog, Dad gets my porn collection, my brother gets Guitar Hero, medical science gets my non-cirrhosis organs, and everything else goes to Bijou Phillips. That settled, I sank into the couch and watched an old homeless man completely decimate my New York Giants secondary.

Sometime around the third quarter I realized that I was drunk. My arms and legs were numb and tingling, my eyes were kind of watery, my stomach felt bloated and nauseous, and I couldn't see straight. "This is awesome," I thought. "I am completely hammered right now and I haven't even been drinking. I've broken through to the other side. My body has become it's own distillery!"

Smiling, I got up to go puke in the bathroom ... and now I was on a magical voyage aboard the H.M.S. Woozy into the land of Porcelaina. The room was spinning right round, baby, right round. Like a record, baby, right round, round round. I grabbed the wall for balance, fell to my knees, curled into a fetal position, and swore that I would never not drink again.

That's how my afternoon went. Constant numbness in the limbs and splitting pain along my nose, ears and back molars, garnished delightfully with an occasional spell of all hell breaking the fuck loose. Imagine just peacefully watching TV and suddenly Beetlejuice is shaking your head like a British au pair. I went through about a half-dozen of these bad boys before I decided to get serious about the problem and seek medical attention, which when you don't have health insurance means "punching your symptoms into Google and completely freaking out." Here's what my "doctor" told me was wrong:

1. Brain tumor -- Obviously.

2. Brain trauma or concussion -- Possible, as I do have a concussion history, in addition to a penchant for banging my skull into hard things. I ruled this out, however, because I hadn't suffered any brain trauma lately nor had I seen the little silver pixies that generally follow whenever I do get a concussion. I sometimes miss those pixies. I'll go through a period of bleak soul-crushing depression for a few days, lift my head too quick, and suddenly tiny bright lights are flickering back and forth in front of my eyes. "I'm not lonely, frustrated and suicidal -- I just bruised my cerebrum a little bit! Tee hee!" But I digress.

3. Meniere's Disease -- This is actually a pretty tragic disorder that causes prolonged loss of balance and atrophy of hearing. Irish author Jonathan Swift was a sad suffer before the disease was properly understood. His constant falling and staggered walk led to the public assumption that he was an alcoholic and degenerate lunatic, damaging his reputation among the intelligensia and frustrating any hope of career advancement. We'll be back in a second to "Horrible Things My Mother Told Me That May or May Not Be True."

4. Alcohol Abuse -- No surprise there. The internet blames everything on booze. Loss of memory? Alcohol. Trouble walking up stairs without getting winded? Alcohol. Numbness in digits and lower extremities? Alcohol. Impotence? Alcohol. Um, not like I've looked any of those things up. Especially the last one.

5. Inner Ear or Sinus Infection

Further research matched some of my other symptoms to this ailment, and because it's the one diagnosis that doesn't require me to get a CAT scan or write letters to all the people I've wronged over the years, that's the little circle that I'm pushing all my chips into. I have an inner ear infection. I will now put my fingers into my diseased auricular canals and scream the lyrics to Poison's "Nothing But A Good Time" until you walk away.

Is there an upside to vertigo? Not really. It's greatly subsided in the past few days, and has gone from feeling like that really fun drinking game you play in college where you spin around the bat to now just feeling like I had Red Bull injected into my corneas. Yes, Mom, I'll go see the doctor, just as soon as my stupid ex-landlord sends me my deposit check, which is another whole story that I don't want to get in to.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go see if I can find some Japanese cartoons and make myself travel through time.