Summary

Days before starting her MFA grad program, Rachel Weaver woke up dizzy and unable to function – a condition that persisted daily for fourteen years and stumped over thirty doctors before she received a diagnosis. What begins as a mysterious symptom quickly transforms into a lengthy odyssey through a broken medical system, where she encounters dismissive doctors, misdiagnoses, and treatments that often worsen her condition.

Author

Rachel Weaver is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel Point of Direction was chosen by the ABA in spring 2014 as a Top Ten Debut and awarded the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Contemporary Fiction. Her second novel, The Last Run, is forthcoming. Prior to earning her MFA in writing and poetics from Naropa University, Weaver 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. She lives in Colorado.

Reviews

“An arresting new memoir….”
—Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

“Dizzy is a testament to the power of hope. Weaver’s courage and strength are so inspiring they encourage the same in the reader.  If all of that isn’t enough, the beauty and agility of the prose may make you regret reaching the last page.” 
—Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys

“Dizzy is a memoir of the highest quality. It brings beauty and urgency to the overall necessary conversation about the U.S. medical system, while also functioning as a beautifully written literary memoir. This high-stakes story is spiked with moments of uncommon wisdom, poignancy, and deep emotion. I was moved to tears many times.”
—Erika Krouse, author of Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation

"Dizzy evokes what life is in wreckage of chronic illness, with suffering compounded by abandonment by specialist medicine that has no means to care for those it cannot treat. Ill people will find a lifeline of companionship in Dizzy; healthcare professionals will face a challenge. Rachel Weaver never softens her story, and that gives it truth as a testimonial to the will to live fully in whatever conditions life throws at you."
—Arthur W. Frank, author of At the Will of the Body and The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics