Maureen Corrigan

Many of these human vessels of hope end up dismissing Weaver with an all-purpose diagnosis of just too much stress.

Early on, when Weaver hears that assessment of her dizziness by a nurse practitioner,

She thinks back to her time in the Alaskan Forest Service, where her job occasionally brought her into close encounters with angry brown bears.

Pretty sure it's not just stress, Weaver tells the nurse practitioner.

Indeed, one of the ways Weaver beguiles readers to stick with her through her long years of landlocked seasickness are her flashbacks to her work in Alaska.

As Weaver points out, her face-offs with animals in the wild often mirror many patient-doctor encounters.

Here, for instance, is the end of an appointment with a young ENT who's just callously shrugged off Weaver's baffling case.

Surprisingly, that doctor ends up giving Weaver a break on her bill.

That discount is crucial to Weaver.

She's mired in medical debt since her night job doesn't provide insurance.

Weaver recalls, I tried to feel grateful that she had miraculously lowered her rate to something reasonable, but that shrug played over and over in my mind.

I wanted to shrug back now that it was my turn, but I couldn't.

Thank you, I said, dropping my eyes, taking my place below her in the animal kingdom of the health care system.

Patient, doctor, broke, not broke, weak, powerful.

In Dizzy, Weaver astutely captures these moments of placation and dominance.

She adopted this meek behavior, as many of us do, because she was desperate.

She wanted to be thought of as a good patient in hopes of securing more attention from a doctor, maybe even a cure.

What Weaver appreciates more deeply throughout her long ordeal is that the art of healing has to do with listening and being open to accompanying a patient into off-road terrain.

If heaven, according to the talking heads, is the place where nothing ever happens, the bardo, according to George Saunders, is as jam-packed and frantic as Costco on Black Friday.

We Saunders fans have been to the bardo before, that suspended state between life and death, where, according to Tibetan Buddhism, a person's self-awareness helps determine what kind of existence they'll enter next.