The truth hurts ... my Mii

The Wii quite regularly gives me this cheery assessment: 

My husband smirked when he first saw it, and said I've always been 'Unbalanced'.

This particular score here came about after a rather intensive left-to-right balance-shifting session. I had to use my balance to hit virtual soccer balls being thrown at my on-screen character's head, and artfully dodge the random sneakers and, er, panda heads, also coming my way. Do you know the Wii Fit balance game I'm talking about? It's called 'Soccer heading'. You can watch a video of it here: http://www.wiifit.com/training/balance-games.html

(As another shoe hits my onscreen character, my 'Mii', square in the forehead, even my cat gives me A Look. I can only assume my Mii has squealed, and I'm suddenly rather grateful that I can't hear the pain I'm inflicting.)

'Are you seriously trying to hit the shoes?' said my husband when I first started playing this game, shaking his head in disbelief. (He likens it to the uncanny talent I have for steering my car over a piece of foreign road debris when I am actually trying to go around it.)

My balance does genuinely suck, it's true. The concrete steps at Parliament Station would wholeheartedly agree, after our face-to-floor liaison a couple of years ago. I must say though, I'm rather comforted – and impressed – that this chirpy little console recognises the truth. ('Can't say we didn't get our money's worth!')

Vestibular testing back in January confirmed that I have zero balance on my left, and only a tiny bit on my right. ('I wonder … if I were to lose that last little bit on the right, would that cancel out the negatives and make me balanced again?' The mathematical mind boggles!)

My brain has allegedly learnt to cope with what I have, so I can now generally walk without holding on to things, provided I watch where I'm going. This can be a challenge when I'm walking along and chatting to somebody else because, these days, I have to watch their lips to know what they're saying. So it's a constant compromise between watching their lips and watching the path ahead, and I often wind up walking in zigzags. If you see me approaching when I'm walking along with another person, best give me a wide berth. ;-)

So what happens to your balance system once you have cochlear implants? Probably a question I should have thought to ask the audiologist, in between following laser dots on the wall and being spun around in a chair, but I was just having far too much fun! So I'm afraid I don't have a full answer to this yet. But these, at least, are my expectations …

Post surgery: there is no doubt I'm going to feel dizzy, with the cochlea unleashing its anger at the intrusion. (Multiplied by two.) I've been warned to expect dizziness already, based on the level of residual hearing in the right. The left side should cope a bit better … hey, maybe it'll even welcome the intrusion, after having been dormant for so long! (Not likely.)

I will need to locate the buried survival instincts I developed after 18 months of vertigo attacks in 2007 and 2008. For my fellow dizzy friends out there, these are my tips to help rooms stop spinning: 

1. Take a deep breath to avoid the panic building up.

2. Focus on a dark-coloured inanimate object until the spinning stops.

3. Don't stand up for about 30 minutes after eating a meal  (unless  projectile vomit 'target practice' is on your agenda that day).

Post switch-on: what's likely to happen when the brain is suddenly flooded with sounds again? I've heard mixed reports – we are all different – but I'm expecting the dizziness to hang around, at least for a few weeks, while the brain learns to cope with sound again.

Balance typically improves, I've read (with or without Wii Fit balance training, he he). So, if that winds up being the case for me, will I be queuing up for dancing lessons in the near future? Sure … my lack of balance has been the only thing stopping me from completing perfect jetés and pirouettes! All this time! (*Face pretends to light up*) But seriously, voluntary spinning? Urgh. Not likely. No. I will just be content to walk in something that resembles a straight line again.

In the meantime, I giggle as yet another shoe hits my Mii. (OK, so maybe there's a sadistic streak in there somewhere …)

Will I someday be able to change my Wii Fit score from 'Unbalanced' (one star) to 'Champion' (four stars)?

There might well be hope for me yet.