‘Sudden vertigo left me desperate for help’

Posted on 31 October 2016

When Ami Kapilevich woke up dizzy one morning, he didn’t think much of it. But when the dizziness persisted, it made him fear the worst. It turned out to be benign positional paroxysmal vertigo (BPPV). He shares his story with us.

Benign positional paroxysmal vertigo

‘If I start slurring, put me in the car and drive me to the emergency room,’ 41-year-old Ami told his wife. ‘And don’t stop at the red robots.’ He thought he was having a stroke.

He had woken up on 27 September 2016 in Cape Town feeling dizzy, without any prior warning. ‘I’d gone to bed without any problems the night before, but when I sat up in bed the following morning, my head spun’.

‘The dizziness had passed by the time I got to the bathroom. But when I tilted my head back to wash the shampoo out of my hair and leaned over the sink to brush my teeth, I felt like I was on a rollercoaster,’ he recalls.

The symptoms persisted throughout the week. Slowly but surely, a fear grew inside his mind. Worrying thoughts gripped him – imagining he had a brain tumour or would have to live the rest of his life with constant dizziness.

‘I made an appointment with my GP, but before I could see her we went to a party where I chatted to a friend of mine in the medical profession,’ says Ami. ‘It sounds like you have benign positional paroxysmal vertigo, said my friend, adding: You don’t need a GP. You need an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist.’

The ‘miracle’ manoeuvre

Benign positional paroxysmal vertigo (BPPV) occurs when particles in your inner ear – which usually help you balance – are displaced from their normal place in the vestibular labyrinth. The vestibular labyrinth is a series of knot-like tunnels in your ear and contains fluid that helps you with balance.

The dizziness, or vertigo, occurs when your head is tilted because the tiny particles are in the wrong place. Fortunately, there is a way that ENTs can move the particles into a different part of the ear and, if successful, this will stop the dizziness. This is called the canalith repositioning manoeuvre.

The manoeuvre is completely painless, requiring a certain rotation of the head. Ami was literally cured within minutes of undergoing the procedure in his ENT’s rooms, just over a week after his symptoms first occurred.

‘It felt like a minor miracle,’ he recalls. ‘I skipped out of the doctor’s rooms like my three-year-old skips out of an ice-cream shop. It made me realise that sometimes the most harrowing symptoms have benign causes, but also that the psychological effects of those symptoms can be more dangerous than the symptoms themselves.’