Dizzy: A Memoir

by Rachel Weaver

In her early thirties, Rachel Weaver woke up dizzy and unable to function. She spent the next ten years seeing more than thirty medical practitioners before receiving a diagnosis, and then another eight years before finding relief from her condition. Dizzy is a medical mystery and a cautionary tale about our broken healthcare system. It is a story about learning to live with life's uncertainty, persevering in the pursuit of answers, and striving to find joy.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Health, Audiobook, Medical

325 pages, Paperback

Published February 10, 2026

About the author

Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now. Point of Direction was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, by Yoga Journal as one of their Top Five Suggested Summer Reads and won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction.

Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She is on faculty at Wilkes University’s low-residency MFA program, and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop where she won the Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018. She is the owner of Sandstone Editing where she works with authors one on one to help them get their books ready for publication. Rachel’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Sun Magazine, Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, Southeast Review, Medicine and Meaning, River Teeth, The Healing Muse, Alaska Women Speak and Fly Fishing New England.

Rachel’s medical memoir, Dizzy, is forthcoming in February 2026 with West Virginia University Press as a part of the Connective Tissues Series. She also has a novel, The Last Run, forthcoming in June 2026 by Lake Union. For more information visit https://rachelweaver.net/land. Point of Direction is her first novel.

Reviews

[Devi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dizzy should be required reading for all medical professionals to remind them how to be human. It should be gifted to all patients navigating chronic health conditions to remind them that they’re not alone and that hope can be useful. It should also be read by their loved ones to help them better understand what most people, much less ailing ones, could ever put into such effective words. But even if by some miracle your life has not been touched by medical challenges, this book is worth reading for the riveting journey and stunning prose alone. It’s highly effective as a memoir, but at times it reads more like a page-turning thriller, at others a medical horror and still others it veers into action-packed wildlife adventure story territory with breathtaking scenes set in the wilds of Alaska. Yet it’s also a moving father-daughter story like none I’ve ever read and a beautiful romance to boot. That doesn’t sound like it should work, and yet it moves so seamlessly, so organically between these distinct eras of the author’s life, and with such vivid, impactful characters, that the story wouldn’t make sense without them. It does delves into some very dark territory but what resonates most are the triumphs, the glimmers of hope, the small wins and the unexpected acts of kindness. And it’s those small, wonderful moments that have rendered my copy of the book soggy. Honestly, I can count on one hand (with a couple fingers leftover) how many of the thousands of books I’ve read that have led me to shed tears, and this is one of them. Fortunately, they were happy tears. This is a truly moving and amazing book. I’m so excited to hear the author’s got a new novel coming out in June. I will definitely read anything she writes. Highly recommended!

[Jennifer Koskinen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weaver somehow turned what sounds like a nightmare into one of the most perfect memoirs I’ve read.

AMAZING. Rachel Weaver, her page-turning book, her writing, her weaving of stories of resilience in the face of every kind of challenge, and the medical mystery at the heart of her story. I will be thinking of this one for a long, long time!

[Kendal Lyon · Rating 5 out of 5]

In her memoir, Dizzy, Rachel Weaver tells the captivating story of her search for answers to a medical mystery that upends her life just as she's about to begin grad school. The appalling inability of many of the doctors she sees to take the time needed to listen to her symptoms and consider a diagnosis outside of their areas of expertise will be familiar to anyone who's suffered from a rare medical condition or disease. And for those who haven't, you will be pulled into her world, where floors tip and walls slide away, where navigating traffic is something akin to trying to drive in a teleidoscopic world, and where the medical system shrugs and walks away. I couldn't put the book down, and I cheered when the author finally found a doctor who took the time and care to listen and to help Rachel reclaim her life. This is an important book. You'll be drawn in by the medical mystery, by Rachel's persistence and courage, and by her accounts of living and working in Alaska, woven throughout. This is a fine literary memoir with prose that sings.

[Diana Hitchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10. This book is a rare story of the reality of living with chronic illness in a world that only sort of cares (for the allotted minutes you’re given and if you’re buying what they’re selling.) Rachel weaved together a true work of art by juxtaposing the dark, maddening grind of being sick 24/7 and trying to get better with tales of the more palatable and societally glorified suffering of living and working in the backcountry of Alaska. As a fellow mountain athlete and adventurer who was struck with long covid right as I was beginning grad school at 29, I can relate deeply to her experience.

I admire her honesty and vulnerability, and I hope this book exposes more people to the horror and injustice of the chronic illness epidemic that lives mostly behind closed doors, but is wreaking havoc on our society. The book makes a strong case for the medical system (including insurance) to do better. Period.

Thank you Rachel for writing this book, for all of us that are still stuck in sick land, looking out through the bars of the jail cell, trying each day to both enjoy life and find answers, hoping that one day we can cross over into freedom.

[E.J. Levy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best memoirs that I've read in ages, DIZZY is a remarkable odyssey that seamlessly weaves together two courageous journeys: the author's experiences as a young woman working for the Forest Service in remote Alaska, where she faces down bears to protect endangered birds, and the story of her 16-year battle with inexplicable illness--a nearly incapacitating dizziness--that seizes her after she leaves Alaska for Colorado to attend graduate school. A gripping medical mystery, a riveting adventure story, an anthem to wild places, a moving portrait of a writer's coming of age, an indictment of the failing medical system, and a love story, this is book that has everything and deserves a wide audience. It reminded me in the best way of Cheryl Strayed's WILD, in its portrait of a young woman in a wilderness, refusing to give up, despite almost insurmountable challenges. Her mantra Achieve Anyway is admirable and good advice; the book makes clear she has done just that. Highly recommended.

[Genene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this more. But also, I think that's the point. There are no easy answers, or happy endings, or secret tunnels to get through to the other side. Weaver was dizzy the whole time and not just a little bit, I'll-get-through kind of dizzy. If you've had vertigo or inner ear crystal kind of things, you know how horrible even a few minutes can be. Imagine 16 years of it.

I initially recommended this book to a friend because she experiences the same. And when I saw her last, she said, yeah, there's no resolution. In the book. Of course. And perhaps with her, too, considering the many, many doctors she has seen over the many, many years.

The point: life is not perfect. And you have to adapt. Unfortunately, that includes adapting to our health care system and its profit from insurance companies ... because that, too, is dizzying and if you don't understand that piece, I'd read this book because that's an education you don't want to live to know.

[Jessica Glynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book so much! Dizzy is a beautifully written memoir that is equal parts medical mystery and adventure story. The author expertly weaves wild stories of daring field research in Alaska, complete with bear encounters and a shipwreck, with her infuriating quest to have her debilitating dizziness understood or even believed. Her descriptions make the ground shift and walls melt as you frantically turn pages in search of answers. As a person who's been lucky so far to live a healthy life, this book helped me understand the fear and powerlessness of having an unseen, undiagnosed illness while also tackling universal desires-to be a good, present parent and partner, to pursue dreams and doubts-with so much wit and heart. I highly recommend this read to anyone who has ever been or known a patient, which is everyone, and I hope the practitioners described in these pages read and learn from it too.

[Dee Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I flew through Dizzy by Rachel Weaver in just two days, completely pulled along by one question: would she finally get a diagnosis and find relief after 16 years of dizziness and brain fog and pain.

While her medical journey is gripping, what makes the memoir especially rich is how it’s interwoven with her fascinating time working in Alaska with the Forest Service, along with the quiet, persistent grief over her father’s untimely death. Those layers give the story real depth beyond the search for answers.

It was disheartening to read how much the medical and insurance systems added to her stress and suffering instead of easing it and reminds me how the USA needs to over haul our healthcare system.

What has stayed with me most though is her resilience. Weaver keeps searching, keeps advocating for herself, and keeps going even when the path forward feels impossibly unclear. A powerful, eye-opening read.

[Rabea · Rating 5 out of 5]

If there was a “Song of Patient” I imagine Rachel Weaver wrote it. The trust and faith in a system that let her down over and over again is not uncommon, amazingly, but its coupling with her keen intelligence and finely gauged writing is.
She suffers acutely for eighteen years, determinedly seeing a menagerie of providers and specialists. By a miracle of timing, she finds lasting relief by changing her diet, which is in the coda.

I am working on a “we will hope” healthcare company and will suggest this book to anyone who thinks second, third, and twelfth opinions are only for psychiatric cases.

“I stared at him, dumbfounded. Here was the first offer to address what was happening on the surface and to hold the space for all that was going on underneath it. To keep close tabs on the whereabouts of my body and my brain. Twice a week sorting was a recognition of how bad it was, how desperately I needed the support, not only as a patient, but as a person.”

[Marika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Rachel Weaver has written a memoir about her 18 year struggle with near constant dizziness. Her dizziness began as she was entering Graduate School causing her to dropout and which followed her like a black cloud affecting every aspect of her life. Rachel is a very intelligent woman who went from one medical expert to another to try to find an answer/solution to her problem. She went to neurologists, to acupuncturists, to chiropractors and even to those who she knew rationally wouldn't be able to help her (healing frequencies etc) but still the dizziness held on.
What she never lost was hope; hope that there was a solution and that she would find it despite the well meaning physicians who were ineffective.
What was the cause of her dizziness? Read her memoir to find out and to learn about the power of hope.

[Rebecca Blessing · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG! I can barely stand being dizzy after getting off a swing. How one could endure 16 years of all day, every day dizzy AND write a genius book is baffling and shows the true spirit of Mrs. Weaver. She ENDURES - and I'm so glad she does! (Her debut and last book Points of Direction was written and published WHILE she was dizzy all-day every-day. Oh, and it won the Willa Cather Award for Fiction, was a top ten debut by The American Booksellers Association, was an Indie Next List Pick, and an Oprah Book Club Pick. In order to write it she MEMORIZED each sentence before she went to a computer to look at a screen for as long as she could endure.). Get this book to feel inspired by one woman's quest to find answers, stop her world from spinning, and fight the broken U.S. medical system. Also for propulsive and inspiring read. I could not put this book down, read it in a day!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

It can be difficult to read about another person’s medical saga— whether you’ve suffered from a similar affliction or not. Rachel Weaver somehow manages to weave a compelling narrative braiding her adventures in the backcountry of Alaska with her torturous experiences navigating the American health care system. I was especially struck by her ability to drop the reader right into her terror living inside an unpredictable body while trying to hold down a job, a partnership, and eventually twin boys. She deftly describes the kindnesses she discovered along the way—relationships she forged with real healers, whose only desire was to make her feel better. To make her feel whole. And the lingering memory/legacy of her father that helped pull her through. Powerful, riveting and hopeful.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could not put this exceptional memoir down and stayed up past my bedtime to finish it. Rachel is a gifted storyteller and her rich memoir is so much more than just a medical memoir or illness narrative. It’s also about grief and loss, and the healing powers of nature and art to help us weather our suffering. Before Rachel got sick, she was an avid outdoors woman and bad-ass field biologist working in southwest Alaska, and she writes beautifully about the wilds of Alaska. I dare anyone to read this book and not be moved by Rachel’s perseverance to create art and start a family while coping with a debilitating illness.

[Tina Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel Weaver did an amazing job taking us through the tangled web of our medical system. One of my biggest take aways is how each doctor lives on an island separate from other doctors. They don’t care how many doctors you have seen or the outcomes of each situation yet they want you to give your family history which is of no use since you’re only allotted 7 minutes of their time. I am so concerned for anyone that doesn’t have a support system. Great book and beautiful writing.

[Alexander Pendragon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in a day - I couldn't put it down. It paints a grim portrait of our broken healthcare system, but not one entirely without hope. Medical professionals of all backgrounds and practices - I beg you to read this book and reflect on the choices you have, the power you hold to make patients feel seen, and heard, and human. Weaver's writing was at times funny, at times heart-wrenching, and always honest and thought-provoking; I'm adding Point of Direction to my to-read list now.

[Maureen Stanton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a well-written and absolutely harrowing account of the author's chronic dizziness and her desperate quest for help from a largely indifferent and utterly dysfunctional medical system for a diagnosis and treatment. This book is the poster-child for our country's need for a single-payer health plan or Medicare for all, health care severed from employment, that simply guarantees every person the right to quality healthcare when they need it.

[Shane Jimenez · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful chronicle of a young writer afflicted by a mysterious, debilitating illness, and the years-long journey she takes through a broken medical system, advocating for herself when few providers take the time to see her humanity, in order to reclaim her health and all that which gives her life meaning.

[LILIA A · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kept me engaged

It was amazing how much this person endured and unbelievable how long it took to get a proper diagnosis and effective treatment. I was keenly interested because I have 2 crippling conditions that could not be diagnosed with any test, and for many years, I lived almost believing I was crazy.
The only thing I did not appreciate in this book was the cursing. I would have appreciated a warning to make a more educated decision on my purchase.

[Alissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who's had problems with two kinds of vertigo for the last 30 years, it was both a relief and triggering to read such a close account of the author's harrowing experience with dizziness. In her memoir, she makes clear that dizziness is poorly understood and how much time and money she had to invest in finding treatment.

[Angie McCullagh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this memoir and felt equally outraged on behalf of the author as she navigated America's messed up health care system and sympathetic to her horrible, awful vertigo. Having been through a few bouts of it myself (though much shorter in duration), she has all of my admiration for functioning AT ALL during those years, much less having children, working and going to school.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Medical mystery meets the horrors of our healthcare system. This book made me grateful for my own health tho I absolutely feel the feels when things happen and you have to advocate for your health with people who should be caring.

[Claire Binkley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The kinds of medicines that worked to help me did not work for this person. How perplexing.

[Marcy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! How scary. I’ve had my fair share of migraines, doctors, and insurance issues…. This is such an accurate depiction of healthcare or lack thereof in America today. Such a travesty.

[Carrie Brown-Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about a mysterious illness, fighting bears in Alaska, and chronic pain.