Most women can group themselves into one of three groups: dizzy girl, headache girl or sore tummy girl. Over the years I’ve ventured in and out of each of them. One even got me a diagnosis when I was eighteen.

I was in Year 13, living the full-on, stressed-out life of a high achiever on the brink of going to university. I was a head prefect, doing extra-curricular work that took up most lunch breaks and seeing my friends when I wasn’t studying or working. All I’d ever wanted was to be an adult. Leaving my hometown to study was the first step to adulthood. I had visions of attending lectures and studying in the library.

Then the dizzy spells came.

The odd dizzy spell wasn’t unfamiliar to me. In my life I’d fainted a couple of times, and standing too quickly (a reckless move on my part) often left me blind for a second as my blood pressure caught up. But these were different. I’d be sitting at my desk when a wave of dizziness and nausea would grip me. I wouldn’t have moved a muscle, and I’d become a slave to this feeling – waiting for it to pass. It was the kind of dizzy spell that forced my eyes to close and an unbidden ‘woah’ from my lips. I started getting them everyday at random times. Some were quick, others lasted a minute or so and lingered afterwards. Nothing seemed to trigger them.

After months of this – having to stop what I was doing to sit with my head in my hands or standing holding a banister with my eyes shut – I made an appointment with a doctor.

I sat down and stood up with a blood pressure cuff on. We took bloods and prescribed iron pills for the pescatarian I was. We waited.

In Year 12, I’d run five ks three times a week, now I couldn’t even do yoga. I didn’t do anything that might trigger a dizzy spell. I went for a slow walk with a friend through the Kaipara backroads and had to lie down in the grass, eyes shut, for a while before we could turn back. She made me a flower crown of daisies and took a photo. When I saw the photo, the melodramatic in me couldn’t help but see some kind of beautiful funeral. Mourning the death of an energetic life ever existing for me again.

The blood tests came back normal, and my ferritin lifted ever so slightly. Nothing stopped the dizzy spells. It wasn’t a question of if they were affecting my life, it was how much.

My doctor came to the conclusion that I had autonomic dysfunction or dysautonomia. It was a disorder that meant that for some unknown reason my autonomic functions (like blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, breathing) had forgotten their modus operandi. An extreme version of it called POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) left people unable to stand for long periods of time and severely impacted day-to-day life.

She referred me for an ultrasound on my heart and an exercise stress test to check there wasn’t any cloak-and-dagger going on as far as the heart was concerned. For good measure they booked me in to wear a halter monitor for 24 hours on the exact night of my university toga night. Needless to say my toga looked appalling trying to cover the electrodes stuck to my chest, but all three tests came back normal. Good news for my heart.

Dysautonomia to me was a fancy way of saying ‘we believe you that you feel unwell, but we just don’t know what’s wrong with you’. My diagnosis felt like a lucky dip. I got given one, sure, but it wasn’t really what I wanted. I didn’t know what to do with it now it was mine. I guess I just kept it around.

My parents took me to a naturopath that specialised in blood sample analysis. On the screen she pointed at my blood cells and told me what she saw. I’d eaten chips in the car and she could see the fat from them taking up space. She asked me about my symptoms, diet, lifestyle and diagnosis. She made up a bottle of liquid that tasted foul but she promised would help and sent me on my way.

I took my spoonful of medicine every day over my first semester of university and eventually, surprisingly, I got better. I reduced my stress, ate better and gave myself downtime. The dizzy spells ceased, and I could go out dancing with friends.

I forgot about dysautonomia and being unwell for a while.

Then the headaches started.

At first it was just the odd ice-pick headache at my temple. A sharp dart of pain at random times of the day. As the frequency of these increased, so too did another type of headache. Soon, the dull throb of my frontal lobe began to consume my days. Once a headache began, it could last for hours. A few months in, I was getting them every day – a heavy throb garnished with the occasional ice-pick.

Sometime amongst all the headaches, I had a week of constant goosebumps up and down the length of my right side. It’s hard to explain the sensation of reoccurring goosebumps, but each time they returned, they hurt more and more. The tiny muscles contracting got fatigued and my skin tender.

I went to my doctor three times about the headaches (a different doctor this time, I had moved cities). She sent me for blood tests and stool tests and asked me to keep a headache journal. One night after filling out my journal, I tried to imagine life without headaches, and I started crying when I realised I couldn’t.

I ended up having headaches every day for a year. One day they just stopped. I realised about a week in that I was waiting for a headache that wasn’t coming.

Every now and then I get reminded of these times in my life. A dizzy spell will force me to sit with my head between my knees; a headache will feel the same, the old stabbing paying me a visit.

Most of the time, I have the luxury of forgetting I was diagnosed at all. Occasionally on runs my heart behaves differently and I wonder if that’s commonplace in other people’s lives or just mine. Maybe I have a periodic autonomic dysfunction. If it’s related to stress, I don’t want to heighten it to find out. Year 13 was a big year for me. Living away from my mum and sister for the first time, trying to maintain a standard of living while being pulled in so many directions. Looking back I was likely undereating; and I’d started drinking every other week with friends.

When the year of headaches came, I was working full time at Whitcoulls relatively stress-free. The only common denominator between the flare ups was me.

So, while I live in the forgotten shadow of the diagnosis of dysautonomia, sometimes I feel like I’m just waiting for the next year of dysfunction.