Hi All,

I am pretty new here, but I hope someone can help me gain some answers to what is going on.

To give you some background, I am 30 years old and 15 years ago, as a young man I suffered a massive subarrachnoid brain haemorrhage which nearly killed me. Indeed I arrested twice on the operating table, yet by chance and luck, I am still here. As a general rule am normally quite okay. I have no impairment in movement or brain function, in terms of everyday logic, problem solving, etc. Just a rather poor short-term memory and issues in organizational skills.

However, the following has taken place since.
About 10 years ago, I used to get attacks of dizziness, normally lasting about 30 seconds or so which simply made me feel very sick and hot, commonly breaking out into a serious sweat. These would happen anything between once a month to, at their height, 2 or 3 times a day.
After a year or so, these eventually went away, but were replaced approximately 5 years back with a tendency to occasionally, perhaps 3 or 4 times a year, fit in my sleep, which resulted in a dislocated shoulder. Again, this lasted for about a year before going away by itself.

Now the problems are back, and this time I've been putting up with it for almost 2 years, hoping it would go away, as the other two did, but it isn't showing any signs of stopping.

What happens now is this...
I get dizzy spells and 'blackouts'. Sometimes I get a warning of up to 2 or 3 minutes whereby I feel a little 'disconnected' from reality, other times it comes on in 10 seconds or so. When the dizziness actually hits, it's like my brain has been hit with strong drugs in a sudden rush, the hot feeling from 10 years ago breaks out and then I black out. To the outside world, I am still conscious and at times even continue with 'life', such as completing paperwork, doing whatever I was doing previously, etc. However, those who know that I have these episodes will recognise them as I may appear confused or very one track minded, only focussing on what I had planned out in my mind to get done, I never however actually lose consiousness. I have no active involvement during this phase. Typically the fog slowly lifts around 5 to 10 minutes later, whereby I may be a little confused for a couple of minutes - I will however have no memory of the time between the dizzy spell starting and it's eventual end, I then have to piece together what has happened in between. Sometimes, with warning and something to focus on, such as really concentrating on reading a book or email I can stop the 'blackout phase' from happening and only get the dizziness and hot sweats, occasionally with a strong emotional rush of negative feelings for a minute or two before returning to normality.

This is happening anything between once a month and twice a week at the moment and I don't know what to do about it. Is this condition known? Is there anything I can do?

Any help appreciated. Mav