After a hys­terec­tomy, Cheryl con­tracted a post-operative infec­tion and was given the antibi­otic gen­tam­icin; a known side effect of which is a loss of the sense of bal­ance (equi­lib­ri­o­cep­tion). When it was over­pre­scribed to her the inevitable happened.

The Tele­graph fol­lows Cheryl’s story on los­ing her sense of bal­ance and enlight­ens us on neu­ro­plas­tic­ity in the process.

For Cheryl there is no peace, even after she has fallen to the floor. I ask her, does the sense of falling go away once she has landed? ‘There have been times,’ Cheryl says, ‘when I lit­er­ally lose the sense of the feel­ing of the floor… and an imag­i­nary trap­door opens up and swal­lows me.’ Even when she has fallen, she feels that she is still falling, per­pet­u­ally, into an infi­nite abyss.

But today all that is about to be chal­lenged. She is wear­ing a con­struc­tion hat with holes in the side and a device inside called an accelerom­e­ter. Cheryl licks a thin plas­tic strip with small elec­trodes on it, and places it on her tongue. The accelerom­e­ter and the tongue strip are con­nected to a com­puter. This machine, a bizarre-looking Bach-y-Rita pro­to­type, will replace Cheryl’s vestibu­lar appa­ra­tus by send­ing bal­ance sig­nals to her brain from her tongue. It could end her nightmare.

via Mind Hacks