PERMANENTLY SEASICK
In July 2001, Jane Houghton, 37, from Warrington in Cheshire, went on a week-long Mediterranean cruise starting in Palma, Majorca, with her husband and teenage son. Halfway through the trip she became seasick. “In the evenings, when we were on dry land having a meal, I would continue to feel as if I were out at sea. In restaurants the tables would bob and weave about. I felt like I was constantly walking on a trampoline.”
The feeling continued after she returned home. Her doctor prescribed anti-motion seasickness tablets and later anti-depressants, neither of which helped. An MRI scan failed to show a brain tumour. “The sensation of being on rough seas was constant, no let up, even when lying down,” she said. “Everyday tasks like using a computer, ironing, vacuuming, all increased the level of motion I felt.” She began to feel suicidal, quit her job as an office manager and now works two days a week.
Searching the Internet, Mrs Houghton found the US-based Vestibular Disorders Association. She wrote to them explaining her symptoms and in February 2002 they pinpointed mal de débarquement syndrome (disembarkment sickness or MdDS), a diagnosis confirmed the following September at the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. It was a relief to have a name for her complaint, but unfortunately there is no known cure. The condition, caused by a malfunction of the inner ear, is not widely recognised and is frequently misdiagnosed. “More than four years later, if anything I am worse,” she said. “I wake up and the room is see-sawing. It’s just like being on the roughest seas imaginable in a little boat. I feel as if the ground is falling away from me all the time… Raising awareness is crucial in helping suffers know that it isn’t all in their heads.” She was being treated at the Leicester Balance Centre under the guidance of Andrew Clements, a specialist physiotherapist. “No one knows why some people are susceptible,” he said. “There may be a viral component.” D.Telegraph, D.Mail, Metro, 16 Nov 2005. FT207:17
THEY’RE OUT TO GET YOU
In 2001, a scare story that tricksters posing as perfume sellers were using a knockout spray to drug and rob women spread rapidly around Britain by email. In the first week of May it was sent to hundreds of office workers in Swindon, Wiltshire. The following week the email, entitled “All women please read (serious)”, swept through Derby, Norwich and Aberdeen (and no doubt many other places) with the location of the first-hand witness account adapted for each region.
“I was approached yesterday at around 3.30pm in a Woolworths parking lot by two men,” said one message received in Derby. The men asked the shopper what kind of perfume she was wearing and if she would like to sample the scent they were selling. The woman refused as she had heard that bogus perfume sellers were operating. In fact, some companies (such as Scentura) do hire people to sell perfume door-to-door or in car parks, and they do work in pairs and employ aggressive sales tactics, such as asking women what kind of perfume they’re wearing.
The knock-out perfume urban legend appears to stem from an incident reported to the Mobile, Alabama, police in 1999. Bertha Johnson, 54, claimed that she had
