So I am in the Netherlands and instead of me helping my 87 year old dad around the house I am stuck in bed with him waiting on me hand and foot. It's not right but thankfully he's a very fit 87 year old.

On Thursday morning I had a shower. My dad has a shower curtain and you know the way they tend to billow inward as the hot water comes down. Except I felt like I was falling toward it. Only lasted a couple of seconds and I didn't dwell on it. The rest of the day was fine.

Friday morning, same thing happened but worse. Steadied myself and went back up to the bedroom when all hell broke loose. The entire room was spinning and before I knew it I was puking my guts out. The strangest thing was that there wasn't much to puke. Hardly anything from the dinner, and after that just yellow bile. None of the proverbial "chunks".

By lunch time I was able to lie in bed with my eyes closed and prevent further gagging.

That lasted until approximately 20:00 when I had another attack. This time what little came out looked dark and my youngest uncle who is a retired nurse thought there may be evidence of blood. He reckoned it was probably the earlier puking irritating my hiatus hernia, so not critical as such, but blood is blood and you can't just ignore it.

At this stage I cannot open my eyes as the nystagmus causes severe motion sickness. Keeping my eyes closed kept it at least a little bit under control. So he took me to the nearest hospital where there is a "huisartsenpost" - something similar to a VHI clinic.

The doc there did some tests and was soon able to rule out stroke. Her diagnosis was BPPV. She concurred with my uncle's assessment that the blood was probably not too big a deal but she was worried and told us that should it happen again or get worse, or should I produce tarry stools I should immediately contact them again. I was given medicines to stop me puking and esomeprazole as a stomach protector and sent home.

The good news is that these both seem to have helped. I've been able to keep food down and everything coming out the other end looks normal.

But I was meant to drive my car rental back to Brussels Saturday afternoon and fly home and, nope, that was never going to happen.

In fact the acute phase of BPPV may last up to 4 days and, as she explained to me, it may have a "long tail" of after effects so I think I won't be driving for a while. As of today I can just about get up, very gingerly, but I feel I still need to find my "sea legs".

I contacted SIXT and I am trying to get them to collect the car as I'm not driving it anywhere. This may prove to be a problem as they don't normally provide this service to non corporate customers. But needs must and there are SIXT offices only 5 KM away in Kaldenkirchen just across the German border.

I booked a flight back from Düsseldorf on Friday. My brother-in-law can bring me that day and I arranged for travel assistance in the airport.

Won't be working this week but I am feeling a good bit better. On Saturday I still preferred to keep my eyes closed, today the nystagmus is gone but walking around is still not ideal. Spending my days in bed. Eating fruit and soup. Yum 🫩

Yeah.

Fun.

Ah well.