My name is Christine. I am currently a Systems Engineer at Linode (where this website is hosted) who deals with interesting Linux problems and does her fair share of firefighting while on-call. I live in the Philadelphia area with my cat, parrot, and partner. I also have a chronic vestibular {something} disorder (more on this later).
I made this website because I have not found a resource like this yet, and I wanted to share what I have learned with the world after dealing with chronic neuro-related issues over the past year.
My story is long and windy, and to be quite honest, I am not even sure the full narrative yet! The core of my more debiliating symptoms started around July, 2019 — however — I had many chronic issues related to my Vestibular dysfunction prior — I just didn’t know it it at the time.
Since that fateful July day, I have had some form of dizziness in my daily life, ebbing through various waves of severity. I have had ups and downs, and downs and ups. Its a pretty constant roller coaster. I have been diagnosed with Vestibular Migraine, Post-Concussion Syndrome, Persistent-Postural Procedural Dizziness, etc. etc. This is why I simply refer to it now as vestibular {something} disorder. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As many Vestibular Warriors can identify with, the experience has been quite frustrating. Having an unclear diagnosis, treatment plans that do not work, drugs that are supposed to help the dizziness that just make you more dizzy, and no real clue to how and why it all started.
As an engineer, not knowing the root cause and source of my issues is like having that bug in a legacy system that continues to crop up every couple of months. You keep patching little things, restart some services, do a reboot or power cycle, and you think you got it, but it continues to rear its ugly head and page you in the middle of the night.
For me, one of the hardest hurdles was adapting how I work. I lived on the computer. At the onset of my chronic dizziness, I was a Technical Project Manager with the heart of an Engineer. I worked long hours on complicated projects and after work, I worked on servers. Most days, I viewed a screen more than I did not. My dream of being an Engineer was close to coming true, and then I was whacked in the face with a new reality. I had to adapt, and I did. It was devastating. I was so close to my dream — a dream that involved working exclusively with a terminal — and suddenly here I am sobbing hysterically because I could not look at a computer for more than 15 minutes without my world spinning.
I was and am lucky to have a supportive employer that allowed me to stumble (literally) through my new reality. I figured out how to make it work. I am 100% still figuring it out, but I iterate and find new ways to optimize. This is who I am. I make bad jokes and will continue to use computer analogues to describe how I feel (sorry). I feel like I am on a boat most days, but I have not let that stop me.