Dizzy and Deaf

Hours after a massage, her world turned upside down

- Sandra G. Boodman

IN THE FALL of 2019, 56-year-old Catherine Nettles Cutter was enjoying a massage when she felt a jolt of pain shoot down the side of her neck into her collarbone. Then she heard the loud crack that changed her life.

"Whoa," said the massage therapist who had been turning Cutter's head from side to side. As Cutter sat up, she felt nothing out of the ordinary. But when she awoke at 7 a.m. the next day, she was violently dizzy and nearly deaf in her right ear.

A professor of food science at Pennsylvania State University, Cutter has battled migraines much of her life. So she thought the intense pressure in her deaf ear might be causing a migraine that had triggered the vertigo.

Her husband took her to a walk-in clinic, where a nurse practitioner suggested Cutter might have either a type of vertigo caused by an inner ear imbalance, or labyrinthitis, an infection of the inner ear. She was prescribed an antihistamine to treat the latter and told to see an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist.

The next day, Cutter felt even worse. The vertigo was accompanied by dry heaves and an inability to focus her eyes. Her husband called the clinic; a nurse told him that his wife might be having a stroke and should get to the emergency room. But after running tests, doctors ruled out a stroke. They too suspected labyrinthitis and prescribed anti-nausea medication.