​​If the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is to be believed, the opposite of bragging is to be uncomplacent, which is “not feeling or showing satisfaction with oneself or one's position or achievements.” Uncomplacently (spellcheck claims this isn’t a word, but spellcheck can be such a brat), let me share with you that our latest novel, One Bride for Seven Brothers: The Last Brothers is available on Amazon as a preorder.
 
The preorder has been up for a while, to tell the truth, but I forgot to share the news here. Or anywhere, actually, because I am lacking in marketing skills. The book will be out of preorder and published on April 4th, 2021, which is less than a week away.
 
Because I’m lacking in calendar-reading skills as well, I was unaware that Easter also happens to fall on April 4th this year. I discovered this today. So, we have our first full-length novel in four years coming out on a national holiday. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing (see: lacking in marketing skills), but I guess I’ll see. I’d like the novel to do well because I really like what we wrote. Also, it’s the conclusion to our long-running One Bride series. There were a lot of storylines to be resolved and I think (I hope) they were resolved in a satisfactory fashion.
 
Normally, I’d do a happy dance to celebrate this achievement. I still might but, at the moment, there are a couple of other things that are bothering me right now.
  
What bothers me the most is that some readers are going to be unhappy that we’ve priced the new book at $2.99. Every other One Bride story was listed at $0.99, so this probably feels like a cash grab. Easter or not, *ugh*, the reviews we'll see. All I can say in our defense is, The Last Brothers is three times longer than any of the earlier stories and took five times longer to write. In regards to blood, sweat, tears, effort and word count, the price is fair.
 
The other thing that itches at me is that it’s been forever since we published the first story in the series. We always knew we’d complete the run, if life didn’t interfere and finish one of us first, but it’s taken a ridiculously long time to go from, “Placing her master’s cup in its place, Flora carried the silver serving tray into the study” to finally typing, “The End.”
 
I told Glynn, we must never take so long to finish a writing project again. He agreed. Then I told him there were two more stories I thought we should write set in the same world. He did not do his happy dance. I’ve yet to tell him The Last Brothers is coming out on Easter. Until we turn the leaf on that calendar, he'll have no idea.
 
What’s the opposite of “happy collaborator”?

Please note that nothing I write here should be accepted as medical advice. I'm not an MD and I have no medical training. I'm relating what happened to me, not what you should do for you. With that disclaimer in place, let's go on.
​ 
​Last week, I talked about what happened when I suddenly and unexpectedly developed benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. Here’s the short version: the dizziness came out of nowhere, I thought I’d had a stroke, the local ER doc had no idea how to treat it and, at home, Glynn found a procedure that made the BPPV less terrible. Still, even after using the Epley Maneuver, this overwhelming sensation of vertigo was a fresh dose of miserable that would strike me every two to three months. I lived in dread of when it would happen again.
 
To prevent it, I began making lifestyle changes. I stood more slowly, turned my head more cautiously, and tried to avoid anything that might cause the calcium crystals in my middle ear to shift and send the world spinning. I gave up dancing, either with Glynn or just joyously alone, and I used to love to dance. I was doing whatever it would take to continue to feel normal.
 
In my downtime, I was on the internet, trying to see what I could learn about BPPV. I discovered that women get it more often than men; that the middle-aged and old are more likely to suffer from it than the young. There’s a possible genetic component, too; I found out later that one of my female cousins has it. At one time or another, BPPV will strike about 8% of the population. For most people, it’s over and done in less than two months. For others, about 2.5% of the total, it can continue to recur for their entire lifetime.
 
Without surgical treatment, I was looking like a lifer. Surgical treatment is available, but rarely recommended; the failure rate was too high for my comfort. On top of that, when it doesn’t work, surgery can make things worse. I started haunting BPPV forums, where people spoke about what they’d done to try and improve their situation. One woman said she’d increased the amount of water she drank and it had helped. Another said she’d stopped ingesting caffeine, and that had helped. I didn’t see how either of these approaches would keep those damnable ear crystals in place, but both suggestions were benign approaches to the problem.
 
I could do those things. Maybe.
 
As much as I feared vertigo, you need to understand, I’ve had a long-term love affair with my morning cup of coffee. I’ve worn t-shirts that say as much, and my refrigerator has magnets that celebrate our tight-knit relationship (I HAVEN’T HAD MY COFFEE YET. DON’T MAKE ME KILL YOU.) If I was told I had to decide between waking up with Glynn or being greeted by a hot cup of Joe… but that wasn’t the decision, was it? The choice was between nausea, vomiting, and being incapacitated, or losing the daily jolt and suffering from a headache while mourning my caffeine high.
 
Very reluctantly, I switched to decaf. I abandoned chocolate, started checking labels for caffeine content, and increased my water intake. In short order, my inner ear quit misbehaving. The benign paroxysmal positional vertigo became less frequent, then it seemed to go away.
 
It didn’t return until I visited my regular doctor and her assistant flushed away some inner ear wax. Almost immediately, the world started spinning again. I begged the assistant to stop, she did, and my MD recommended I go to see one of our town’s Ear, Nose and Throat experts. Since my regular MD is wonderful, I did as she asked.
 
Which, if you’ll recall, is where I left off at the end of my last blog. During my consult with the Otolaryngologist – they get paid by the vowel –I told him I was much improved from how I’d been. I told him, I thought I knew why, too. When I shared the more water/no caffeine regimen, he said, flatly, “There’s nothing about that in the literature.”
 
I knew this. I’d seen the literature. “Still,” I said, “there’s no harm in telling someone what worked for me. If you have a patient who’s at her wits’ end, you might mention it to her.”
 
He didn’t respond, but his expression said, There’s nothing about that in the literature. No matter the situation, he wasn’t sharing what I’d said. Not with anyone.
 
Then he suggested that the two of us do a little experiment together. If I truly had BPPV, this procedure would throw me into full-blown vertigo. Within minutes, maybe seconds, I’d get dizzy and feel like vomiting.
 
“And this will help you fix it so that it doesn’t happen again?” I asked.
 
“Oh, no, there’s no cure,” said the sadist solemnly. “But your reaction will allow me to make an official diagnosis. Then I can put that in your chart.”
 
Either he loved his charts or he hated me. I decided not to do this. Instead, I went home and poured myself a cup of decaf. Later this year, I’ll be attending a wedding.
 
​I intend to dance during every song the DJ plays.

​Several years ago, waking up in the middle of the night, I knew something was wrong. Although it was very dark, I could tell my bedroom was swirling around me. I’d never experienced anything like it before. And I was terrified.
 
“Glynn, wake up,” I said. “I think I’m having a stroke.”
 
I was too young to have a stroke (not true, by the way. Ten percent of all strokes occur to people under the age of 45), but nothing else made sense. I could barely stand upright, walking was a challenge, and nausea was coming at me in waves. We should have called an ambulance – and you should, too, if this ever happens to you – but we lived so close to the local hospital that we never thought of it. Minutes later, Glynn had collected a wheelchair from the Emergency Room entrance and was wheeling me inside.
 
It was 3:00 AM-ish, and the place was empty. Vitals were taken, questions were asked, I was gowned, I.V.’ed, and presented to the ER doctor. Other than my loss of balance, I didn’t exhibit any of the early warning signs of a stroke. I was medicated for my nausea and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I felt better, but not well. Any motion made me sick, which ruled out getting an MRI. Whatever was happening to me, the ER doc didn’t think it was something awful. Which is how I knew he’d never experienced that level of dizziness.
 
I was sent home and told to return to bed. If I didn’t get better in a few days, I could return to the ER. For what, they couldn’t exactly tell me, but Glynn wheelchaired me out and to bed I went. With the room twirling, twirling all around, I fell asleep again.
 
While I dozed, Glynn went on the computer. The internet is an easy place to misdiagnose symptoms, but he generally remembers this and treads cautiously. Within minutes, he had a name for what I was experiencing: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. The condition is benign, which meant it wasn’t going to kill me; paroxysmal, which meant it came on fast; it’s positional, which meant the calcium crystals in one of my middle ears had gone rogue, escaping into the semicircular canals; and those shifting crystals were sending the wrong signals to my brain, giving me vertigo.
 
According to the online experts, BPPV can be over in a minute. Or it can last for days. WebMD advised, “If you have dizziness on and off for more than a week, you should make an appointment with your doctor.” You think? Just don’t use the ER doc in my town, I’m telling you. He’ll have no idea on what to do.
 
The good news was, the internet offered multiple ways to treat this condition. Glynn printed out the Epley Maneuver. (Thank you, Dr. John Epley.) It’s easy to do, cost nothing, and only took a few minutes to complete. If you’re curious, there are multiple YouTube videos on how to do it properly. For some people, the Epley Maneuver resolves the problem immediately. For the cursed – like me 😊 – the process has to be repeated over a period of time to shift those inner ear crystals back to the utricle, where they belong.
 
The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad news was that BPPV can return. And, when it does, as it did frequently with me, it’s as miserable as ever. Each time it happened, the dizziness and nausea would knock me down for a day. There was no way around it.
 
But, but, BUT… after making a couple of lifestyle changes, I haven’t had a BPPV attack in years. When I told my local Otolaryngologist (Ear, Nose, Throat MD) what I thought had helped, he looked at me as if I was crazy.
 
“There’s nothing about that in the literature,” he told me, completely dismissing what I had to say. Then he asked if I’d let him do something to me that sounded completely crazy.
 
That story, however, will have to wait until next week.