OOP:
Your comment "it's like someone is sitting on the back of my head and my head actually leans forward with the 'pressure'" struck home with me. It is the pain I felt in the back of my head for the first few months after GK surgery on a 15mm VS.
I also was also battling “dry eye†due to moderate dehydration, and it was very difficult to determine the main pain culprit. Half the time I wasn’t sure whether the mostly dull pain was in the cerebellum or its close neighbor the occipital lobe, or both. I finally figured it out by eliminating the cerebellum using exercises that I developed to “reset†(re-teach) the cerebellum. The dry eye had little effect after that. Bottom line, the majority of the pain and dysfunction was cerebellar, which may have caused swelling that affected the occipital cortex (possibly a reason for the light show).
Balance is controlled by the cerebellum using and interconnected system of semi-circular canals, eyesight, and the somatosensory (body awareness) system. Once the eighth cranial nerve is damaged, the AN-ear semicircular canals are out of the picture (actually, in my case I wish they were, since they just send noise, not information, to my cerebellum). You might ask, why doesn’t the other non-AN semicircular canals work, and the answer is, they are, but the cerebellum has all of it’s balance memories based on information from both L & R systems; frankly, it doesn’t know what’s going on, overworking trying, and causing arterial muscle pain.
And yes, an extremely important aspect of balance is lost with the semicircular canals, whether we are falling. If in a dark room, or if we turn our head rapidly, we lose the sight aspect of balance, with only the somatosensory system left. If we are not consciously aware of our footing, we have no idea of where we are. And if we are falling (the most likely scenario), we don’t know it until we stop. My first awareness of it was when I reached out to grab a towel in a slippery bathtub when the shower curtain hit me in the face as I turned my head. The result was a split eye bone and a red tub. The scary part was that I didn’t know I was falling until I was prone in the tub. After this, I made sure that I had either a good sighting or good footing before making any quick turns.
For your concern, it is important to rule out cerebellar pain by getting your balance back.
See
Balance: Dizziness, Headaches, and Cognition...an answer! For more information.
I hope that this helps,
Dean
