When we last left off, I was telling you about the day I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
As I had mentioned before, my symptoms had started a bit earlier. Nine days earlier, to be exact.
On April 2, 2008, my alarm went off at 5 a.m. As a work-at-home Mom of two young, active boys, I like to get up early so I can get some writing done before they wake up.
But on this morning, things were different. After I shut off the alarm, I noticed that the room was spinning. Even in the dark, I could sense movement.
Apparently this spinning sensation did nothing for my IQ, because rather than stay in bed for a few minutes to see if it would pass like a logical person would, I got right out of bed. I tried walking across the room to pet one of our dogs as I usually do and barely missed crashing into both the treadmill and the TV.
Like a drunken sailor, I stumbled out to the hallway where I finally stopped, resting against a bookcase, while the chandelier in our stairway moved over and over across my field of vision.
And then, just as quickly as it came, the sense of dizziness and movement was gone.
I made my way downstairs, walking normally again, and headed to the kitchen to make my morning coffee. But I was pretty darn freaked out about what I had just experienced. I had never been dizzy before and I had no idea why this had just happened.
Coffee in hand, I headed to my computer and Googled something like “room spinning sensation”. I quickly learned what I had just experienced was not dizziness, but vertigo. I began Googling causes of vertigo and found there are a ton of things that can cause it to happen, including migraines (which I get a couple/few times a month), and TMJ/jaw clenching issues (which I was also dealing with at the time).
I tried to convince myself the vertigo was probably connected to either one of these issues. As the morning went on and the vertigo did not return, I calmed down and told myself if it came back, I would certainly call my doctor for an appointment. But for now, I would monitor it, and just try to take it easy.
The only other thing that continued to bother me that day was an odd dry mouth sensation. I had felt something similar a few other times in my life, like when I was nervous about giving a speech, or if I was feeling a lot of anxiety over something. I dismissed the dry mouth as a symptom of nervousness over the vertigo and didn’t think much about it.
Until it came back the next day. And the next. And I Googled again, this time about having a dry mouth. And how what I read would change my life.