Many have noted the power of illness and disability narratives to serve as a window into the lives of patients, enabling patients to better understand their own stories and healthcare providers to improve their empathy and understanding of illness experiences (Garden 1). Dizzy, a memoir by Rachel Weaver, interlaces her journey with chronic illness with her experiences in the Alaskan wilderness. The memoir follows Weaver as she moves from Alaska to Colorado to start a graduate writing program, leaving behind her idyllic cabin in Alaska, her previous way of life, and her desire to “live outside the typical expectations” (Weaver 10).
Shortly after arriving in Colorado, she awakes on a morning she describes as “the day that would become the line between Before and After” (Weaver 18) with severe, life-altering dizziness. This forces her to embark on an 18-year odyssey only too familiar to those who have struggled with chronic illness.
Immediately following the onset of her symptoms, she does the logical thing: schedule an appointment with an NP at her school’s health center. “We will meet in the fertile ground of healing that exists between her medical knowledge and my precise explanation of what is happening inside my body,” she writes regarding her expectations for this appointment (Weaver 31). However, the reality is anything but. Instead, she is sucked into a vicious cycle that takes her from provider to provider searching for answers, reprieve, and cure.
First, she searches within traditional spheres of medicine. She sees an ENT that tells her “it’s not your ears” and an ophthalmologist that says “it’s not your eyes” (Weaver 29, 49). Next, she sees multiple physical therapists, a series of neurologists who tell her that she has vestibular migraine, and then another neurologist who tells her that the diagnosis of vestibular migraine is not a real thing. Her desperation increasing, she turns to alternative medicine, hoping that maybe it can offer the answers she seeks. She sees multiple chiropractors, acupuncturists, and a body worker who tells her she and her brother knew each other in a previous life. She finds treatments that relieve her dizziness temporarily, but it always comes back, quicker each time, and with increased ferocity.
Weaver’s writing intimately probes the divide between the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the ill, this new world she is thrust into with its new problems. Her intense descriptions allow the reader to feel the crushing weight of her dizziness along with her, as well as its deep-reaching effects on her life. “Time itself bends into something unrecognizable when you live with chronic illness,” she writes (Weaver 104), desscribing the chasm that has opened up between the life she wants and the reality she is forced into. Weaver lays bare the inequities and injustices embedded in the American healthcare system as well as the effects of chronic illness on her personal life and career. No longer able to stare at a computer screen for more than a few minutes at a stretch, she devises creative solutions to write, edit, and ultimately publish her first novel during this time. Her moments of hopelessness and growing frustration are palpable, but so are her moments of resilience and grit.
Dizzy takes its place among other memoirs that chronicle young women struggling with illnesses that reside in the gray zone of diagnosis and mystery, such as The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke and Sick by Porochista Khakpour. But where it differs is how Weaver constructs an intricate window into the doctor-patient relationship. Interweaving her medical encounters with her past experiences as a wildlife biologist in the Alaskan wilderness, she draws a parallel between the primal dynamic of predator and prey and its persistence in contemporary society. Before the primarily male physicians she visits, she feels weak, powerless in her role as a sick patient, and struggles to convey to them what she is experiencing. She parallels this to being cornered by a grizzly bear in Alaska, the visceral response of adrenaline and fear. This becomes the most compelling part of the memoir, elevating her narrative to not only an account of life with chronic illness, but a window into the power dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship. She illustrates how this power dynamic can result in the failure of communication that victimized her over and over again, writing: “The distance between the land of the sick and the land of the well is too great to overcome” (Weaver 58-59). Her story highlights how patients’ narratives are often wrongly decentered in healthcare, and how reducing someone’s life story to a series of yes-or-no checkmarks fails to capture the flavor and nuance of what it is like to be chronically ill.
Over this period of her life, Weaver sees too many doctors to count, but none truly hear her story and none offer answers that stick. That is, until year nine of her symptoms, when she meets Dr. Tanner, a migraine specialist. This will be her last try she vows, the last doctor’s appointment before she gives up her quest for good. Dr. Tanner takes the time to listen to her story and offers not only treatment options but follow-up, reassuring her that he will not leave her stranded without hope or relief. Slowly, they establish what a therapeutic relationship should be: a continual evolution of trial, reassessment, and reassessment until they find what works for her.
Eventually, her symptoms ease and abate with the care she receives from Dr. Tanner, and Weaver returns to a semblance of the life she knew before. That is, until a bout with COVID leaves her again with intractable dizziness. This time, she is connected with a researcher in Utah named Dr. Bills. Through Dr. Bills’ study, Weaver finds the answers and relief she has been craving. However, her story is not consumed by a diagnosis narrative, a happy ending that can only be achieved through answers and cures. Instead, the focus remains on the journey itself–how truly listening to patient stories is an integral part of healing. In this way, Dizzy gives voice to the often undocumented experiences of so many who are forced to trek through the healthcare system, serving not only as a testament to how patients may be empowered to tell better stories about their illnesses but also as a beacon of resilience to those still searching for healing.
Citations
- Garden, Rebecca. “Telling stories about illness and disability: the limits and lessons of narrative.” Perspectives in biology and medicine vol. 53,1 (2010): 121-35. doi:10.1353/pbm.0.0135
- Weaver, Rachel. “Dizzy.” West Virginia University Press (2026).
