When Eric Markowitz suddenly began feeling a bit nauseous in January 2023, he thought it was just a bug. But within a day, his symptoms became severe. The scariest part was the , he recalls.
“The room was kind of spinning. That’s just what it felt like constantly. No matter what I did, no matter what position I was in, I just felt like I was in the state of spinning,” Markowitz, who lives in Portland, Oregon, tells TODAY.
com. “It’s a really out-of-control, really scary feeling paired with an intense nausea and throwing up.” He was a healthy 35-year-old man, so the extreme vertigo out of the blue seemed bizarre and concerning.
Markowitz’s wife took him to the emergency room, where doctors at first suspected a stroke. But an MRI of his brain seemed clear, and no other problems showed up. He was told it was likely , an inner ear problem that would go away with some head repositioning exercises.
But when he left the hospital, the symptoms only got worse. It would be another month before Markowitz got the true diagnosis and underwent a brain surgery that saved his life. The ordeal started when Markowitz was visiting his in-laws in Santa Barbara, California.
By the time he flew back home to Portland in early February 2023, the vertigo was so extreme he could barely walk and had to use a wheelchair to get on the flight. He saw specialists in Portland who suggested — exercises to manage his symptoms -- but nothing worked. Markowitz lost about 35 pounds in a month beca.