And then it came back.

If I think about it too much now, the feeling I had in that moment, I get nauseous. The way the walls shiver and buckle and turn, and I'm on them, in them, of them. Sky is ground and ground is sky and my stomach is in my throat.

I grabbed S. and said, over and over, oh sh*t, oh sh*t, oh... She was startled awake, adrenaline tearing through her body, and with me she sat up, and she wrapped her arms around me.

My sobs were otherworldly, excruciating and drawn out. I think I said "I can't do it again" over and over, but I don't remember anything but the heaving of my breathing and blowing my nose over and over again. We called the doctor, got in for a 10:45 appointment. When I got up to walk to the bathroom, I pressed my palms against the cool hallway walls to stay upright.

My doctor is an odd one. Odd and, I now posit, brilliant. He's been my internist for about 10 years, and I've seen him out on the town several times, at ourmutually favorite watering hole,rosy cheeked and holding forth. I like him.

I was wheeled into an examining room on a newfangled wheel chair that still confounds me. Facing backward, I sat like I wasinone of those massage chairs at your local Whole Foods, but this one had wheels. I closed my eyes the whole way from the waiting areato the exam room. Doc was there in mere minutes. After explaining my current situation, he pulled his usual laconic, dry witted style of medical analysis and said "well, you know what the hot thing is in medicine these days, don't you?"

Obviously we didn't.

"Inflammation. Do you know what happens with inflammation?"

I began to wonder if I was going to fail this whole exam. My head hurt and I felt hurly.

"When tissues or ______ are inflamed your body releases a __________ the presence of which results in feelings of lethargy, weakness, ______--especially in diabetic patients-muscle aches, headaches, _______. So we treat the inflammation, the root cause."

I got the gist of it. Rheumatoid arthritis. Sinusitis. Celiac disease. Auto-immune disorders, basically. And something about the central nervous system, in my case.

S. started into a list of questions: "When Meghan got out of the car she could barely stand up. Why is it so bad when she's in a moving vehicle?"

"Well," Doc began slowly, drawing out the welllll, "her balance nerve isn't communicating very well with her occipital nerve, so she gets a feeling of dizziness, of not knowing where she is in space."

It was the most articulate thing I'd heard since thishellaciousness began two years ago.

"How long until she begins to feel better?" S. continued.

"Pretty much immediately," he said, calm, sure of himself.

I was not so sure. How could a general practitioner know more about vestibular neuronitis than a specialist? And those I had seen in droves. ENT NP's, ENT's, even a "vestibular system specialist" ENT. Immediately? No ______ way.

I was given a steroid pack and took the first six that day. I was already on antibiotics for a sinus infection so he told me to finish that-"your ear looks full of fluid and your tissues are inflamed"-and gave me some valium for the "living on a dock" feeling and the nausea. "And take benedryl," he said, "the good old fashioned kind. I think they work better than the new formulations."

I don't remember much from that first day save for alternating depths of despondency and hope.

The next morning I woke feeling surprisingly okay. Scarily okay. After a tentative half hour or so, I attempted to lie on my side from a sitting position. A mere 24 hours earlier, even putting my ear to my shoulder started the world turning upside down. There was a slight wavering, but it calmed after about 10 seconds. I tried the other side. Same thing. I yelled for S. and she rushed to the bedroom door, her face furrowed in fear. "LOOK!" I said, and she did. "It's amazing," was all I could say, and S. just stood there smiling, her tears flowing down her cheeks.

It worked. Or, the very least, it was work ing.