My weirdest Christmas: on Boxing Day I vomited in the sink – and began to suspect I had a mysterious condition

Waking foggy-headed and with the room spinning on 26 December is surely not an uncommon condition. Who among us hasn’t felt the effects of overindulgence on Christmas Day? ‘I wasn’t claiming I had been dragged into a dastardly spy plot …’Composite: Guardian Design; handout These were my immediate thoughts when I rose in such a state in my parents’ house in Dublin two years ago. An hour later, the room continued its relentless swirl, nausea was building and it was becoming hard to stand. So far, so Christmas hangover. I remained in bed and waited for things to blow over. They didn’t. Gradually, family members stuck their heads into my childhood bedroom and wondered if everything was OK. I could only say that I felt quite strange. After a couple of hours, I thought I was over the worst, so I joined my mother, sister and wife in the kitchen. Moments later, they watched on helplessly as I vomited in the kitchen sink, a silent bond created between them. This process repeated itself several times over the next day, so I visited a doctor. The GP diagnosed a case of vertigo : not any Hitchcock-infused vision, but dizziness and nausea, usually caused by inner ear problems. Often this lasts only seconds, but there can be more prolonged incidents. I was prescribed medication to restore order. The wider oddity was that, at the time, I was working as a producer on a podcast documentary for BBC Sounds called Havana Helmet Club , investigating Havana syndrome - the 2016 case of mystery brain injuries affecting CIA agents and US embassy officials in Cuba and farther afield. I had spent the previous year researching all aspects of this strange story: starting with the array of symptoms the patients had begun experiencing, seemingly out of nowhere. Most reported hearing piercing sounds in their homes in Havana, followed by overwhelming headaches, dizziness, nausea and, eventually, lasting brain trauma. There was speculation about Russian microwave weapons and jokes about an “immaculate concussion”. Politicians, scientists, diplomats and security experts argued endlessly about it. Some claimed people had simply imagined it or overreacted to the sound of crickets - suggestions that the victims were rather hostile to. Doctors explained that even if there wasn’t a weapon, other triggers - physical and mental - could cause a dramatic reaction in the brain. Shortly before my own incident, I had been listening to an interview a colleague had done with a neurologist. The doctor was talking about how, when you become aware of a certain part of your body, your mind can then overly focus on it. If you’re told you have a family history of heart disease, for example, you might suddenly start noticing how you feel out of breath walking up stairs. In the weeks after listening to this, I had occasionally noticed mild head rushes when I bent over or stood up quickly. In my vertigo-addled state, I attempted to explain all of this to the doctor....

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