When the World Won't Stop Spinning
By Ashley Suarez
Dizziness has followed me for as long as I can remember. As a child, it came in waves: on airplanes, escalators, elevators, rollercoasters, even during simple car rides. Things that seemed normal to other people felt destabilizing to me, like my body processed motion differently. At night, I would lie completely still in bed but feel like I was drifting on a boat, rocking endlessly. Sleep was never something that gently came to me. It was something I had to surrender to out of exhaustion.
Still, I lived my life. I went to school, played sports, laughed with friends. From the outside, everything looked normal. Inside, I was constantly bracing for the next dizzy spell or headache. The headaches were severe, sometimes so intense they led to nosebleeds. When I was twelve, an MRI and neurology appointments led to one answer: severe migraines. I told myself that was manageable. People live with migraines. I could push through. Others have it worse.
But things escalated in high school. I began having violent reactions after eating: vomiting, severe stomach pain, sweating, trembling, dizziness so intense I nearly passed out in class. Eventually, after testing and endoscopies, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. I felt relief at having an answer, but eighteen years of internal damage had already been done. Even after going strictly gluten-free, the nausea, pain, and dizziness didn’t disappear.
And gluten was everywhere, not just in food, but in medications, lotions, vitamins, even pet products. Managing it became a full-time responsibility. I hoped that once I mastered the diet, the dizziness would calm down. Instead, it worsened.
Running became impossible. I remember collapsing after a simple jog around my neighborhood, the vertigo lasting for days. I gave running up entirely. Eventually, I discovered swimming didn’t make the symptoms worse. I never understood why; maybe the water supported my body in a way the ground couldn’t, but I held onto that small victory.
By college, the dizziness was no longer episodic. It was constant. Every second of every day I felt unsteady, as if the ground beneath me was subtly shifting. Stress, caffeine, elevators, stairs, hot showers, lack of sleep, too much sleep, alcohol, almost everything made it worse. Grocery stores overwhelmed me with motion and bright lights. Walking on upper floors of buildings with open railings felt like standing on a tilting platform. I developed routines: closing my eyes while walking, arriving early to interviews so I could recover, focusing intensely on a single object to walk straight.
I stopped sleeping in beds because they made me feel like I was floating. I slept on floors and couches for years and still do because the hardness felt more stable. I adjusted my writing slightly to compensate for how slanted things appeared to me. I intentionally veered right when walking so I wouldn’t drift left. My “straight” was never truly straight.
Eventually, after multiple specialists, I received new diagnoses: vestibular migraines and central vertigo. The dizziness wasn’t in my inner ear; it was neurological. In some ways, the diagnosis validated me. In others, it terrified me. If this was wired into my brain, what did that mean for my future?
Physical therapy didn’t help. Balance retraining, eye exercises, shock therapy…I did it all. Nothing changed. After years of trial and error, I finally found medication that slightly softened the spinning sensation into a constant swaying. It wasn’t gone, but it was livable. I adapted.
I moved to Los Angeles after undergrad, lived independently, held jobs, navigated the dizziness quietly. I moved back to my home state of Texas and worked full time while earning my master’s degree. It wasn’t easy. Stress amplified everything. But I survived. I joked that I was dizzy 24/7 because I was. Humor became my coping mechanism. I thought I had learned to live with my conditions.
Then, about a month ago, everything changed.
I went to the ER for what I believed was a severe celiac flare-up. The stomach pain was intense, but something felt different. My body felt like it was burning from the inside out. The dizziness was violent, not my usual background sway. My chest tightened. Breathing became difficult. I tried to explain that something was wrong beyond a flare-up.
The hospital was busy. I waited for hours. Eventually, I fainted in the waiting room. A nurse placed me in a wheelchair, started IV fluids, and administered medication quickly through my IV.
Within minutes, something shifted.
My body began shaking uncontrollably. Not trembling…convulsing. My jaw quivered, my chest tightened further, my breathing became shallow and desperate. I tried to tell them something was wrong. I was told to sit down and let the medication settle. It didn’t settle.
Time distorted. I drifted in and out of consciousness. I was eventually placed in a hallway bed, still shaking, sweating, and freezing at the same time. Another nurse later told me it was a severe celiac flare-up and gave me more medication.
Eventually, I was discharged. I could barely walk. I went home and collapsed on my apartment floor, shaking for hours, unable to breathe normally. My body felt on fire yet numb. I rested my head on a ball just to feel pressure, humming to distract myself until I finally fell into a restless sleep.
The next day, the vomiting had stopped, but the shaking, chest tightness, and extreme dizziness remained. I went to work anyway, trying to convince myself it would pass. That evening, I went to another ER. Again, I was told it was anxiety and remnants of a flare-up.
It wasn’t.
After days of worsening symptoms, barely walking, struggling to breathe, I returned home to my parents. Finally, at another hospital in my hometown, a nurse listened carefully to the medications I had been given. His expression changed. He told me I was in serotonin syndrome.
The combination of medications administered at the first hospital, along with the prescriptions I was already taking, had pushed my body into a dangerous state. I had been close to respiratory failure. It could have been fatal.
The medication that triggered it should have been administered slowly over ten minutes. Instead, it had been pushed rapidly. My IV site was deeply bruised. I learned I should not have received that medication combination at all.
The realization brought fear and anger. I had known something was wrong.
Since that episode, my dizziness has escalated beyond anything I’ve experienced before. It is no longer a swaying background sensation; it is debilitating. I struggle to walk some days. I had to quit my job and move back home. Sleep medications make it worse. Blood pressure medications make me faint because I’m anemic. Antihistamines intensify the spinning. I lie awake at night in a dizzy haze, hoping for rest.
Some mornings I wake up hopeful that sleep fixed it. It hasn’t.
I’ve had MRIs and CT scans and am waiting for answers, though part of me feels hopeless remembering past scans that changed nothing. I’ve seen a neurologist who isn’t convinced this is vestibular migraine anymore. I plan on reaching out to additional specialists, even the Mayo Clinic, searching for something, an explanation, a treatment, a path forward.
Right now, I spend most days at home, laying on the floor. Walking can feel like navigating a moving ship. Watching a screen is difficult. Even lying down can intensify the spinning. It’s constant. Every second of every day.
I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful for my family helping me move around when I can’t. I am grateful that I can still speak, still write this. But gratitude does not erase the exhaustion or fear. It does not create peace.
I used to joke about being dizzy 24/7. I can’t joke about it anymore.
I am scared this may never go away. Scared that this level of instability is permanent. I try to take it day by day, hour by hour, sometimes second by second. But that is much easier said than done. Living dizzy every second of every day is exhausting. It is disorienting. It is isolating. And right now, peace feels impossible.
I am writing this not because I have answers, but because I don’t. I never imagined I would sit down and try to explain something I don’t fully understand myself. Yet here I am, writing because I am still living this. Because invisible illnesses are isolating; from the outside, I might look fine. Because maybe someone else is quietly living in a body that feels unstable and unseen. Because maybe someone else out there has felt something similar and can understand what this is like.
About the Author
Ashley Suarez is a 28-year-old writer and advocate currently living in Austin, Texas. She grew up in San Antonio and later attended The University of Texas at Austin for her undergraduate studies. After graduating, Ashley moved to Los Angeles where she worked at a talent management company representing actors and musicians. She eventually returned to Texas to pursue her master’s degree in Animal Science and Behavior, combining her lifelong love of animals with her academic interests.
Over the past two years, Ashley has worked at several veterinary clinics and has cared for a wide variety of pets throughout her life, including dogs, cats, fish, toads, a canary bird, and her favorite pet, a sugar glider named Stitch. Her experiences with animals and science have shaped her compassionate approach to both animal care and human advocacy.
Ashley is a passionate advocate for people living with disabilities and chronic illnesses. Through her writing and personal journey, she encourages others to seek answers, advocate for themselves, and continue pushing forward despite the limitations they may face.