Mal de débarquement syndrome (MdDS)

The Inside Passage is relatively calm water.
This is the churniest it got.

It feels like I’m still on the cruise ship. We left the ship weeks ago.

I thought it would be worthwhile writing about my condition, because it’s so strange and rare.  Maybe someone else experiencing this syndrome will find this post and know they are not alone.

The symptoms

Most people, when they get off a ship, feel the simulation of the boat rocking for a few minutes or hours, and then the feeling goes away.  They get their land legs.  We got off the boat the morning of Aug 3rd, and by evening I still had the swaying feeling.  Oddly, though, I did not feel the rocking motion when I was on the bus to the hotel.  I also didn’t notice it when we were on the plane flight home.  And I drove us home from the airport without giving it a thought.

Now, nearly seven weeks later, I still have sea legs, or perhaps more accurately, sea brain. Just sitting in my chair now, it feels as if I am bobbing up and down.  Or if I get up to walk, it feels like things are swaying side to side.  If I stand with my feet close together and close my eyes, it’s a recipe for feeling off balance completely.

But if I’m in a moving vehicle, I don’t feel the sensation at all.  Even though the moving vehicle is a car that is not rocking from side to side.

If I concentrate very hard on a task, I don’t notice the feeling as much, which suggests to me that it is a brain condition.  We’ll see if I can teach new tricks to my old dog of a brain.

Enemy of enjoyment while boating: fog.
Enemy of enjoyment after boating: MdDS.

The diagnosis and correlations

The vestibular therapist, whom I shall call Irene because she is so peaceful and calm, diagnosed me with mal de débarquement syndrome (MdDS).  (She did the maneuver on me with the infrared ocular device and turning my head, to rule out BPPV, which I have experienced many times before.)  

Mal de débarquement means “the illness of getting off the boat” or, the darker interpretation I prefer, “the evil of leaving the cruise”.  As a former French major, I delight in saying débarquement as Frenchified as I can, “DAY-bar-que-MAHN” but that is about the only delight I find.  Americans, including VT Irene, say “dee- BARK- ment.”

VT Irene said my condition is caused by a mismatch between my brain and my ocular and vestibular something-or-other.  In short, my brain can’t believe my eyes nor my inner ear.  

This condition may be more prevalent in people who get frequent migraines, which I get only occasionally (one every few months), which starts with a visual aura, followed by a headache, but not an excruciating one.  Last week, though, I experienced two of those visual auras in one afternoon.  Maybe VT Irene also mentioned a correlation with anxiety, which I have but not officially diagnosed, and not treated by drugs. I also have acrophobia, which is defined as an unreasonable fear of heights.  

I feel that anxiety and fear of heights are reasonable in these interesting times.

Our cabin was on Deck 11.  I did not look down.

The treatment

VT Irene said that there is no for-certain immediate cure.  

She encouraged me to try the dai protocol stripes exercise of watching a video of stripes moving one direction (video available for either direction!), while tilting my head slowly from right to left and back again.  For 5 minutes.  I’ve tried it once a day for a few weeks (missing a few days when we had visitors) but it has not measurably changed my plight.  I probably haven’t done it enough. Blah.  It’s very boring.

VT Irene also has me doing exercises involving looking to the right and left (or up and down) rapidly, including while walking. I discovered that the Big Box store at about 9:30 AM is an excellent place to try this.  I have the shopping cart to hang on to.  Consumer traffic is light at that time.  The aisles are really long.  If you see a woman walking her shopping cart down the aisle looking rapidly right to left, that’s me, pretending to look for the kitchen tools aisle but surreptitiously doing vestibularity.

A few things have temporarily helped:

- driving the car.  Seems to also be ok as a passenger.  (However, perhaps sometime I will write another post about my BsDS = back seat driverism syndrome).  At today’s gas prices, this is not a viable solution.  The MdDS returns as soon as I get out of the car.

- walking while holding 3-pound weights in both hands, with my arms by my sides.  This was one of the V.T. exercises.

- walking while imagining holding 3-pound weights in both hands, with my arms by my sides.  See, it’s all about retraining the brain.

- sitting down, concentrating on a task.

Probably traveling by train or plane would also relieve the symptoms temporarily.

No idea if canoe travel would relieve symptoms.

No amusement park rides for me!

The life

In my life, I have not usually suffered from motion sickness.  Thankfully and amazingly, the MdDS has not made me nauseous.  But it does make me reluctant to walk by myself, for fear I will fall down or look drunk to the other humans.  My walking feels worse to me than it looks to others, friends tell me.  I have not fallen, but occasionally flail my arms around to regain balance.  And MdDS has made me very frustrated.

I’m afraid when walking through crowds, as I did last week at the high school football game, that someone will bump into me and I will crumble.  The MdDS limits my motivation to do my other therapy exercises, for the sciatica.

One of the electeds I am campaigning for.

I have decided to just go on with my life, which right now includes knocking on doors to talk to voters.  It’s for my mental health more than anything else.  When I’m door knocking, the MdDS is not quite as bad, as I’m concentrating on a higher purpose, so I manage to somewhat ignore this unwanted companion.

I’m already prone to vestibular issues, with many occurrences of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, sadly not a French ailment.  And I had one horrid episode in June 2025 which sent me to the ER; afterward the ENT doc said that was not BPPV but something else vestibular, the cause never firmly determined.   Despite my regular inner ear ailments, I never imagined this MdDS condition would be the long-lasting outcome of our marvelous cruise along the Inside Passage of Alaska.  I talked to plenty of experienced cruise-goers before our trip and not a one mentioned this as a possibility.

The brain in the train or airplane feels mainly on a flat plane. 

Make it so.

St Michael's, Annapolis, Maryland.

NIH article for those interested. I haven't read the whole thing.