When Fred Kawabata contracted shingles in 1997, naturally he was concerned. But the last thing he expected was for the virus to permanently knock his sense of balance off kilter, and when the infection attacked the vestibular nerves in his ear, that's what happened.
"When it first struck me i was flat on my back. I had vertigo, I was dizzy, I could hardly get out of bed, and I was that way for a couple of weeks," he recalls. "In about a month, I could get up and walk around although it was still very uncomfortable. It took a couple months before I could be reasonably comfortable walking around. [Now], when I'm walking on a flat surface, I generally don't have to think about it very much. But if I'm on an uneven surface like when I'm hiking and the trail is rough, then I really have to think ...
