BYLINE: Tracey Middlekauff
Imagine suddenly feeling like the world is spinning violently around you.
For Chad Correll, a 47-year-old biomedical equipment technician, this wasn’t an isolated incident. It was the beginning of a seven-year nightmare.
He spent years visiting doctors who misdiagnosed him with everything from clogged eustachian tubes to anxiety. He suffered from debilitating dizzy spells and could hear his own heartbeat pounding inside his head, making concentration impossible.
“I sat up in bed, and everything was just spinning. I’d never had a sensation like that before,” Correll recalls.
Read more: “WHY AM I SO DIZZY?”It wasn’t until he saw Dr. Varun Patel, an otologist/neurotologist at Penn State Health Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, that he finally found an answer. He had Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence, a tiny hole in the bone that covers one of the balance canals in the inner ear.