Hans (49) was sitting on the couch when it suddenly started spinning in his head. The dizziness lasted for months. Until, after a long search, he found a specialized physiotherapist: “The simplicity of the treatment has amazed me.”
“I had a really hard time swinging like I was drunk.” Hans Venerius still can’t believe how his body suddenly let him down, now a year ago “My whole stability was gone and that’s scary. It’s as if something has happened in your head, as if something has snapped .”
vertigo
He thinks about the worst for a moment, a brain tumor for example, but his doctor quickly reassures him on the phone. It will be vertigo, possibly as the aftermath of corona.
Two weeks later Hans still feels just as bad. He goes to his doctor. She does a tilt and turn exercise with him, which confirms her in the diagnosis. A physiotherapist then helps him with exercises against vertigo, but unfortunately: Hans is not going to feel better.
Pretty gloomy
When he visits a throat, nose and ear doctor three months later, it turns out that he has an inflammation of his vestibular system. “The ENT doctor immediately thought of a virus and inflammation and tested it. It turned out that I had an acute failure of 100 percent on the left side.”
The ENT doctor told Hans that he had to move a lot, otherwise there was little that could be done. “Meanwhile, we were already months further. I was back at work, but it took so much effort to walk straight. If I don’t fix myself on a point with my eyes, I have a deviation to the left. That took so much energy that I was tired in the evenings and had little fun anymore. I became quite gloomy.”
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‘For 80 percent my life back’
Through a colleague of his wife, Hans hears about a therapy in Hengelo by two physiotherapists who had started a vertigo center. “Actually, I didn’t believe in that very much, but I made an appointment anyway.”
And it seems to help: “First I was given an intake and very simple exercises to stabilize my gaze, which means that you can train your eyes to stay in balance better. The simplicity of it surprised me. After coming by four or five times, I had 80 percent of my life back.”
10 percent suffer from dizziness
Last May, physiotherapists Mike Hilverink and Jeroen Wesselkamp started Dizziness Therapy Twente. They work together with ENT doctors from the ZGT hospital in Almelo. Apparently there is a need for the vertigo center, because they have already treated more than 200 patients with vertigo.
That number does not surprise Mike Hilverink. “About 10 percent of the population suffers from vertigo. We think that there is currently insufficient knowledge about the treatment options. And that is what we want to make sure that it is well on the map for this region. to stand.”
View the report about the story of Hans and his treatment against dizziness
Long waiting times
According to Hilverink, we should not underestimate the impact that dizziness can have. “The longer it lasts, the more fear takes over. People can even develop anxiety disorders.” That is why it is also important that patients can be treated quickly.
And that is not always possible, there are vertigo centers with long waiting times. “It cannot be that someone has to wait a year for a decent diagnosis. We think it is important that people end up at an intermediate stage at an earlier stage or at least be heard in their complaints. And then we could already start with therapy.”
More practitioners
Tjasse Bruintjes is professor by special appointment of ENT at Leiden University and also works as an ENT doctor at the Apeldoorns Dizziness Center, the national center of expertise in the field of vertigo. He also sees that waiting times are often long. “We see about 1,000 new patients a year with us in Apeldoorn and the waiting time is one year.”
Bruintjes is positive that there will be more therapists. “25 years ago it wasn’t really hot. Now you see a proliferation of outpatient clinics and care streets. I don’t mean that in a negative way, that’s great for the dizzy patient. It was a neglected group for a long time.” But, he warns: “People can make an appointment with a physiotherapist without a referral, I would not do that in the case of dizziness. It is advisable to first see a specialist to get clarity about what exactly is going on. “
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Shame
Hans is still not completely rid of his dizziness symptoms. If he walks with his eyes closed, he has a significant deviation to the left, while he himself thinks he is walking straight ahead. But the fixation exercises help him enormously and that’s a relief. “There was also shame. I had a lot of trouble swinging as if I was drunk. It’s not nice when you walk in a zigzag. That has an obstructive effect, it doesn’t feel good.”
Now he walks much better when he concentrates well. And that feels like a world of difference. “My self-confidence, my enjoyment of life and quality of life have really become a lot better because of very simple handles that I have been given.”