TO ALL DOCTORS TREATING DIZZINESS;

You know us! We are the ninety million Americans of all ages who come to you complaining of dizziness. We come seeking a diagnosis which may range from Benign Paroxysmal Vertigo to diseases of the central nervous system

We realize that dizziness is often very difficult for you to diagnose and we realize that you have other patients with life-threatening diseases that make our problems seem minor. However, no other non life-threatening illness affects every aspect of life like a vestibuler illness. Our symptoms are often so severe that we are temporarily or permanently unable to shop, work, go to school, or carry on normal daily activities. Because of the nature of our illness, social security disability benefits are withheld. Many patients have to apply numerous times before gaining a favorable decision and some are still waiting.

You could make a great difference in the quality of our difficult lives if you would read and meet our requests. They are as follows:

1. Please allot us ample time in our office visit to give you our complete medical histories and please be sensitive enough to listen to them with as much empathy as you would if you were listening to your own mother, father, brother or sister. We may have waited in your office a long time before we got to talk to you.

2. Please do not tell us that no more can be done for us until you have performed all appropriate tests.

3. When tests are ordered, please explain to us what will happen during those tests and what they will show. New tests can be frightening when we are dizzy, and an explanation of them will make us much more comfortable.

4. Please see to it that we have the results of those tests as soon as possible. Waiting for test results can seem like an eternity.

5. Hundred of us have had inaccurate test results, so please do not rely solely on the inner ear tests, but listen to our symptoms and our medical histories.

6. Please do not intimate that our dizziness is due to imagination or anxiety, unless you are absolutely sure that it is. (Women hear this more often than men and are tired of not being taken seriously because of their sex.)

7. Please be willing to tell us that you don't know what the problem is when you don't know. We may have spent many hours and many dollars trying to find out what is wrong with us. We don't want you to guess.

8. Please be willing to refer us to a specialist that might make a diagnosis possible when you can't diagnose us. A diagnosis is very important to us.

9. Please don't tell us that we are fine, that we just walk funny. Please don't tell us to go out and do as much as we can when, as one patient put it, " We're stuck in these bodies that can't keep up," We come into your office with dizziness, nausea and lack of balance. We need all the sensitivity you can give us.

We know that medical science is not exact and that a cure for most of us is at best, remote. If you feel you need to send us on our way with, "You will have to learn to live with it." please take a moment to think what that advice means to someone who may wake up tomorrow feeling as if he/she has just exited a roller coaster ride.

. And the rest of the day will be spent much like that day, and the day after. Please use compassion as you do everything you can medically and ethically to treat us with the utmost respect and dignity. We deserve no less.

Thank you for your attention.