GETTING Curious

One night last fall I was lying on the couch, scrolling through my social media feeds on my phone, when suddenly the room started spinning. As the old-fashioned rosette on my living room ceiling swirled around and around, I struggled to find equilibrium. Unable to situate myself with stability, I eventually called for my spouse, who brought me a bowl, into which I promptly threw up.

This sudden dizziness and nausea—food poisoning, I thought—arrived in the midst of a prolonged period of physical dismay. Months earlier, I’d become suddenly intimate with infirmity thanks to a stubborn and seemingly irresolvable pain in my knee. A sprain, my physiotherapist thought. One I got by sitting at my desk for too long and with not enough attention to my body,