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.

First lines: August 2026 edition

Roses and book review, 2018

Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in August: 4 fiction and 2 non-fiction.  Two books feature Halley’s Comet prominently.  I didn’t plan it that way.

Before getting to the first lines, a question for all y’all.  One of the authors I read this month is John Green.  I haven’t read any of his fiction: Looking for Alaska (2005),  An Abundance of Katherines (2006), Paper Towns (2008), The Fault in Our Stars (2012), Turtles All the Way Down (2017).

Do you have any recommendations from this list?  Not that I need more to read.  But I do like his nonfiction writing style.

 

First lines:

 

Book 1

Southeast Alaskans call it a sucker hole when a patch of blue opens in the clouds and suckers you into thinking the sky is clearing.  Tourists fall for them regularly.

 

It did not rain near us that day.

 

Book 2

When I visit the back corners of my life again after so long a time, littlest things jump out first.  The oilcloth, tiny blue windmills on white squares, worn to colorless smears at our four places at the kitchen table.

 

 

Book 3

The single drop of pee made a pitiful splash.  Fred sighed as he stood over the cracked toilet bowl that, like him, had seen better days.

 

 

Book 4

Around the turn of the nineteenth century, the Scottish tinkerer and chemist James Watt began working on a new project.  He had already achieved fame and success for making steam engines more efficient, helping to fuel the industrial revolution that would radically reshape human history.

This train is only pretending to be a steam engine.
Hogwart's Express, Universal Studios Park

 

Book 5

Prologue 

Comet Halley reached perihelion—the far side of the sun—on April 10, 1910. It swung in a great arc and began hurtling toward Earth at 120,000 miles per hour, just as Stephen Pike was unpacking his case at the halfway house.

 

When I searched my photo library for "comet"
this came up.  Wrong kind of Comet.
Santa's Stable in gingerbread, 2014 (not made by me)

 

Book 6

Belgian Shoes

Angus Lordie, portrait painter, citizen of Edinburgh, husband of Domenica Macdonald and owner (custodian, perhaps, according to modern sensibilities) of Cyril, the only dog in Scotland to have a gold tooth; that Angus Lordie stood in a room of his flat at 44 Scotland Street, wondering what to wear. 

 

 1/4 

Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song.  The days are hot, hot, and all the hot day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky.

Did not finish

This morning, my mother sat in front of me, covered neck to toe in a red-checkered, black-streaked wax tablecloth we’d been using as a hairdresser cape for a few years – fastened with a binder clip, of course.

 

The titles and authors revealed:

 

 

Book 1

Chasing Alaska: A Portrait of the Last Frontier Then and Now

By C.B. Bernard

280 pages.  2013.

nonfiction essays travel

Very good.  Well titled.  The author relates his own experience in Alaska along with a history of his cousin who was a bona fide arctic explorer.  The author is none too pleased with cruise ship tourists, of which I was one while reading the book.  He’s not wrong.  The book contains some hope for the preservation of species and habitats.  But so much has changed politically since this book was published in 2013 that I have to wonder if that hope is still warranted.

 

 

Book 2

The Whistling Season

Ivan Doig

345 pages • first pub 2006 

fiction historical

I enjoyed this story of a family in Montana, trying to make it forward after a big loss.  Overlaying the 1909-1910 story is a framework of a top educator in the late 1950s.  I appreciated the emphasis on the effect a good teacher can have, the pros and cons of a one-room school-house, and Halley’s comet as a plot device.   This is sort of a coming-of-age story–there are no grisly scenes–and it introduces a lot of SAT-type vocabulary words.  It felt to me like tame Y.A. lit.  Recommend if you need a calm story that praises education.

 

 

Book 3

The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife

Anna Johnston

336 pages • first pub 2024

fiction contemporary

An amusing and at the same time wistful look at old age and life regrets.  If you don’t like reading about bodily fluids, skip this book.  But really, that’s what managing old age is often about, so you might as well dive in!  This may be the only book I’ve ever read that opens in a urinary fashion.

I really liked the characters and plot, although the Common Household Husband said for him the plot was too predictable.  In high school when we were reading The Scarlet Letter, everyone else knew who the perp was, but I did not figure it out until the author revealed it.  I rarely can guess the plot in advance. 

There was one trick in the narration which I did not appreciate.  It is revealed about 20 chapters in.  The author did it, I think to reinforce the parallels between some of the characters.  Really, we would have realized those parallels on our own.  But like I said, probably all other readers figured this out long before I did.

I read it for Book Club.   Half disliked it, because they just really didn’t want to read about all those fluids.  The other half liked it.

Toilet functions are #1 (and
sometimes #2) in this book.

 

 

Book 4

Everything is Tuberculosis

By John Green

198 pages • first pub 2025

nonfiction health history science

Recommended by numerous people, including E.S. in my book club, blogger Bibliomama, and one of my son’s friends.

A fast read, examining one widespread and deadly illness as an example for how humans could (but so far won’t) begin healing globally.  Ends with hope.  I recommend it.

 

Book 5

The Murder at World's End

A Stockingham & Pike Mystery #1

By Ross Montgomery

368 pages •2025 

fiction crime historical mystery

A good diversion.  I liked the characters, for the most part, but the nasty family members became tedious about half-way through.  This is the author’s first book for adults.  He has written mostly middle-grade fantasy.  

This is the second book in my reading this month which featured Halley’s Comet as integral to the plot.

Recommended by booktuber Steph of the channel Hathaway Ever After, as seen on this Topher’s Library video.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK4hNTUZxVA&t=2s

 

 

Book 6

Love in the Time of Bertie

(44 Scotland Street series #15)

Alexander McCall Smith

256 pages • first pub 2021

fiction contemporary

I love reading about these characters in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Includes a highly improbable deus ex machina moment to get a character out of a fix, even more unlikely than the moment in Les Miserables when Jean Valjean is leaping across the roofs of Paris and falls into the … but never mind that.  McCall Smith mocks himself for this plot development.  

This reading had me looking up several things referenced in the book:

• The music An Orkney Wedding with Sunrise, by Peter Maxwell Davies. (worth a listen!) Make sure you are watching at timestamp 5:50.

• The opera titled The Electrification of the Soviet Union.  Yes, this opera does exist.  But I did not attempt to listen – not a fan of opera.

• The per capita chance of being hit by lightning, by country.  It’s higher in places with high agricultural labor.

• The location of Inverurie in relation to Aberdeen, Scotland.  The map shows some intriguingly-named local attractions, such as these, with some Google reviews:

• East Aquhorthies Stone Circle (“awsome place and not far from carpark just up a wee hill”

• Dalmadilly Ponds (“Nice wee place”; “a beautifully restored nature haven”; “Went to dalmadilly with my mate philly, was a bit chilly, philly got lost and felt quite silly, beautiful views of nearby hillys and overall was good cause we seen a pond lily”)

• The Maiden Stone (“great wee stopover on route north”; “if you like stone bothering this is a place to visit”)

• Bass of Inverurie (“3 terrific Pictish stones under cover, interesting graveyard”)

 

So in addition to being a calm, thoughtful read, it was educational.

 1/4

I finished the “Summer” section of

The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Margaret Renkl

270 pages • first pub 2023  

Summer is not my most favorite season, but I think it is probably Margaret Renkl’s favorite.

So many good quotes and challenging thoughts.  Such as:

… let us consider the whine of the mosquito…who among us could love you? ….We could love you if we reminded ourselves that no creature is made up only of poison, that no life is only a source of irritation or pain. 

That’s a challenge, Margaret, to love mosquitoes.  You are better woman than I.

Or this:

We have come to August, a time when summer has gone on for so long that winter is scarcely a memory. … This is the time of summer when summer tells us it will never end.

But here is an ancient black gum rising so high I’m obliged to throw my head all the way back to see even its lowest branches, and next to its trunk is a single red leaf, fallen onto the forest floor. … I can hardly believe what it is telling me, dripping in the cloud-drenched woods, but I recognize it now: a prophesy.

I do love it when the first leaves begin falling in late August, to forecast the arrival of autumn.

DNF

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)

Rabih Alameddine

326 pages • first pub 2025 

fiction contemporary lgbtqia+

I might come back to it someday.  But right now, despite my own fondness of cussing, I could not take the repeated foul-mouthed phrase.

- - - - - - - - - - - - 

Halley’s Comet is next predicted to be visible from Earth in 2061.  Shall we have a party?

Redbud tree, midsummer, 2016

Flora and Fauna: six days of Alaska

Our first port call brought us to Ketchikan, where we had arranged for a trip to the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary.  This is a privately held enterprise, not a government-sponsored park.  Nevertheless, I found it an excellent experience.  An elevated boardwalk provides a great vantage point to see foliage and wildlife.  For the more adventuresome, there is ziplining at the top of the forest.

The temperate rainforest setting is beautifully eerie – perpetual fog, but not cold, with moss or lichen growing on anything stationary.  

red elderberry

Salmonberry - fruits like raspberries, in several colors.
Yes, there is a black bear in there.
This is the best photo I have of salmonberry.

Everything was dripping wet.

A lichen called Old Man's Beard

Salmonberry, with its colorful raspberry-like fruits was common. It’s edible for humans and bears, although the guide told us the fruits taste sour.  But it felt wrong to me to disturb the forest by tasting one.

Our guide Basil instructed that if we saw a bear, we should not shout, “LOOK!  A BEAR!” but rather silently raise our hands up in the air (like bear claws), shake our hands around, and point to where we spotted the bear.   We had been told ahead of time to not bring any food. No flash photography.  It seems a good practice for humans to not draw attention to themselves when in the presence of a bear, although I gather that black bears are less threatening to humans than other bear species.

The easiest way to spot a bear is to watch for movements in the ground foliage.  We saw at least three black bears, possibly more, although they might have been the same bears in different spots.   How thrilling it was to see the bears making their way through the forest!  

Mother bear

two bear cubs, about 1 1/2 years old

More fauna in the Rainforest Sanctuary: a bald eagle and a Sitka black-tailed deer.  We saw bald eagles at every stop.  Bald Eagles are no long an endangered species, but are still protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.

When we were off the elevated boardwalk,
the guide gave us extra instruction on what
to do if we encounter a bear.
Mainly: don't run.

bald eagle

bald eagle

Sitka black-tailed deer.  In Pennsylvania
we only have white-tailed deer.

This website has a much better photo of bald eagles, and explains how the Orange Menace’s regime (of course) reduces incentives for private companies to use practices to protect birds.  

Layers of trees

The first solo car trip I took without my wee children (at the time I had two) was in Nova Scotia.  I rented a car in Halifax and drove northeast for two hours to a small town for a family event.  There were no other cars on the road, and I seemed surrounded by nothing but trees for miles and miles.  

When it comes to tree population, Alaska was Nova Scotia on steroids.  While hardly setting foot in the Tongass National Forest, I am grateful for its existence.

We chose well for our activity in Juneau - a photo safari.  I was just getting re-acquainted with my “fancy” camera.  Anya, our guide with Gastineau Guiding Company, allowed us time to soak in the atmosphere and choose our photo subjects, rather than rushing us along.

Among the excursions it is good we did not do in Juneau are:

Dog sledding on Mendenhall Glacier 

Seaplane

Self guided jeep tour

Bicycle tour

Bike and Brew

Anya pointed out interesting plants along the Trail of Time.  The Northern ground cone, which rather strangely grows not on a pine tree but right from the ground, is parasitic and does not do photosynthesis.  

Devil’s Club (“Oplopanax horridus” - what a great scientific name!), has medicinal uses but we were warned to stay away from those nasty-looking thorns.  

Northern ground cone

Devil's Club

lupine wildflower near Mendenhall Glacier

The Trail of Time also showed us a stream with sockeye salmon cavorting.

salmon in stream

Our photo safari included a trip aboard Captain Rob’s small vessel (only 14 people!) for whale watching.  That was when Anya revealed her camera with an enormous lens.  I was glad I had brought my 55-200 mm zoom lens, which I had not used for maybe 10 years, but recognized I was in the presence of photography gurus.  

That's the Common Household Husband
standing at the bow of the boat.
Anya is just to the left of him.
I could not stand in the bow for fear of 
provoking extreme vertigo.

Here are a few of the 200+ photos I took of whales and the surrounding scene.

   

Captain Rob said the people in that small boat
on the left were breaking the rules of
the Marine Mammal Protection Act by being
too close to the whales.

Humpback whale tail and mountains

Whale spouts

These whale were working cooperatively
on getting dinner ready.
The birds follow along for a treat.

Dorsal fins and spouting

In Icy Strait Point we noticed pine trees with cute little pine cones -the Lodgepole Pine.  The tiny cones are actually male pollen.   The white flowers are spirea - a bush we have in our own garden here at home.

Pine tree with teensy "cones", and
white spirea flowers

This is my one photo of fireweed flowers, which are ubiquitous in Southeast Alaska.  Alas, we only saw the big fields of its striking bright color from afar.  Anya told us of a famous Alaskan saying: "When fireweed turns to cotton, summer is soon forgotten."

All rights reserved for photos and text.  This means just look, don't copy.

Posts in this series:

Alaska: rocks, fjords, and water 

Alaska: culture and commerce

Seattle: West Coast whirlwind