This article originally appeared in the Winter 2026 issue of On The Level.
Losing Balance, Finding Purpose
Michelle’s Vestibular Journey
Before her world was upended by dizziness and uncertainty, Michelle Anthony led a bustling life. She was a mother of two energetic daughters—a one-year-old and a four-year-old—with a thriving career she loved and a passion for staying active, fit, and social. Life was full, busy, and bright with possibility.
Then suddenly, and without warning, everything changed.
a new and terrible illness
The dizziness started with a severe sinus infection. She hoped that it would heal and take the spinning with it. But this infection seemed determined to haunt her.
Michelle’s world would tilt and jolt as she sat motionless. It felt as if she were moving through water, and her vision would lag behind each movement.
“It was like I was walking on marshmallows,” she said, “and my legs threatened to give way beneath me.”
unsolvable symptoms
Michelle pressed on for answers, desperate for relief. Her ears felt plugged, her head ached with tingling pressure, and fatigue sandbagged her once-vibrant spirit.
Repeated visits to her ENT offered only antibiotics, steroids, and mounting frustration as the dizziness continued day after day.
She found herself caught in an exhausting cycle of doctor visits—ENTs, neurologists, therapists, and primary care physicians—each puzzled by the mosaic of symptoms.
Exam after exam yielded few answers, only more anxiety and a sense of sinking isolation.
The one thing she knew was that it had grown into far more than “just a sinus infection.”
her lowest point
The stress and despair mounted. The constant dizziness made everyday life impossible. Things like a trip to the mall or grocery store became impossible due to the overwhelming lights, shelving, and sounds.
Not only was she suffering relentless, debilitating symptoms, but the unknowable was driving her deeper into anxiety, stress, and—eventually—a depression that threatened to engulf her.
Michelle recalls, “At my lowest points, I even considered just ending my life because I couldn’t see myself continuing on this way.”
Despite it all, Michelle fought to hold onto the person she was before.
“I forced myself to go for a walk every morning,” she says. “Some of those walks were brutal. I would cry often, just feeling this marshmallow sensation under my feet. As I’m walking, I’m praying, begging, and bargaining with God to ‘please just fix me.’”
fighting for her family
It was not just her body and spirit that suffered; Michelle’s illness stretched into every corner of her life. Motherhood, once a joyful cacophony of play, now carried new burdens.
“My daughters were so young at the onset of all this,” she shares. “They were too small to understand. I couldn’t communicate how sick I was, or why I needed them to be quiet.”
Through all her challenges, Michelle’s family was supportive and understanding, even when her illness seemed like it wanted to pull them apart.
“My mom, dad, brother, and friends all did everything they could to support me, and I knew it was breaking their hearts to see me living with such a diminished quality of life,” recalls Michelle.
Things that her family once bonded over fell out of reach. She had to make deeply painful decisions, like staying home while her family attended a professional basketball game they had all been looking forward to.
“I just couldn’t go,” Michelle explains, recalling this moment of disappointment. “Moving my head back and forth as the players run up and down the court, the crowds, the stairs—it would have been too much.”
Balancing a Career
Through all the dizziness, fatigue, and suffering, Michelle had to constantly fight to keep up with her job without pushing beyond the limits of what her body could handle.
Being able to work from home was a saving grace. Still, she had to balance her health with her workload, all without revealing the true extent of her illness to her workplace.
She found ways to survive, relying on blue-light blocking glasses, apps to dim her screens, and strategizing every moment to make it through another day.
“If I’d had the option, I would have stopped working, but as a young family, we needed the steady income. Fear and necessity kept me going.”
Finally finding answers
Desperate for answers, Michelle turned to the internet. That’s when she found a Facebook group where other people were describing exactly what she was experiencing.
“For the first time, I felt like I wasn’t completely alone,” recalls Michelle.
Finally, this online community led her to a neuro-otologist who delivered the diagnosis: Vestibular Migraine and Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness (PPPD).
With a name for her suffering, Michelle could start to rebuild—slowly.
Vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT), medications, dietary changes, supplements, and a patchwork of lifestyle changes became her regimen.
Healing did not come overnight. But, as months passed, symptoms faded. The glimmer of hope grew stronger. She started breaking the dizzy-anxious-dizzy cycle. Michelle started to believe that she could get better.
“Getting my anxiety under control was a big step in my healing journey,” she explains. “I began to believe that life could actually be good again.”
Today, Michelle lives fully—traveling, laughing, swimming, jumping, even riding roller coasters again!
“VM and PPPD will always have to be managed. That’s just reality,” she says. “But the fear and anxiety of these symptoms no longer control me. They’re part of my story, but not in charge of the story.”
giving back
It wasn’t until later in her journey, when she was already on her path to healing, that Michelle found VeDA. She knew right away that she wanted to get involved.
She started attending VeDA’s Dizzy Moms Club online support group. “People from all over the world come together. We laugh, we cry, we process together,” explains Michelle.
Michelle also became a VeDA Ambassador, a volunteer role she takes very seriously. She helps others find VeDA, offering the lifeline of knowledge and support she once so desperately needed.
“My journey would have been so different if I’d known about VeDA sooner… the resources, the community, the hope I wished I’d had.”
She knows that her volunteer work with VeDA could change the course of someone’s vestibular journey, saving them years of suffering alone without answers or treatment.
“If I can touch one person, that’s enough,” Michelle says.
