Seasick On Land
Today, we are honored to be part of Kimberly James’ artistic and health journey. She shared the first element of “Seasick On Land” on Instagram, but she is sharing the whole series with us to more fully tell her story. Kimberly suffers with multiple chronic disorders and describes Mal de Débarquement Syndrome as being, “like horrible sea sickness that never ends, except you’re not on a boat – it’s freakin awful”.
“All of these were created in my hospital room in 2019, while I was an inpatient in a rehabilitation hospital while specialist physiotherapists, and occupational therapists tried to help me with my severe dizziness.
I was only allowed to create art for about 5-10 minutes a day because it caused my dizziness to get so much worse. But they knew that creating art, even a small amount, made me so happy, so they let me do a bit.”
Find her on Instagram as @kjartlife and her blog at https://kimberlyjames.substack.com/
A note on “dizziness”
Although MdDS is recognized and listed in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) under Dizziness and Giddiness, we recommend avoiding using the words “dizzy” or “vertigo” when describing your symptoms. Many have better success getting their doctor to understand when they say, “I feel like I’m on a boat” or something very descriptive such as “the floor moves up and down as if I’m on waves on a boat.” Learn more about Getting Diagnosed at https://mddsfoundation.org/getting-diagnosed/
I’m margo singh. I describe my symptoms as imbalance I told everyone I don’t have vertigo nothing is spinning. My body feels like rocking 5 years ago
Definitely not dizziness, I use the word oscillation to describe the sensation which I have had since 16/10 2004. Perhaps as though walking on a water mattress.