My dad used to work in the coal mines of West Virginia. This was before I was born and right around the time my parents got married. His father and uncles were coal miners as well and my grandfather wished for my dad to work anywhere but the mines. Continue reading
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means my brain doesn’t know when to stress out about something and when not to. Two of my closest friends also have anxiety, and in a weird way I think it’s made us closer. The stress from our anxiety affects our minds and our bodies. Continue reading
This past August, my friend I were leaving the mall and walking to my car. I unlocked my car door and took a step up into my car. Out of nowhere, a sharp pain shot up back and I fell to the ground, screaming, and in tears. Continue reading
What happens when two people with Anxiety high five and one of them is wearing a stone ring meant to help alleviate anxiety attacks?
Leslie Feinberg died today. I did not know until reading the article about hir passing that zie was struggling with Lyme disease. Andrea Gibson posted about Leslie’s passing on Facebook and came out publicly as also having lived with Lyme. Leslie Feinberg and Andrea Gibson are two of the most influential and inspirational people I have ever encountered, so it’s strange to think they they have the same disease I had (have?). I never realized that other people (particularly those knew/knew of) had Lyme disease. I used to think it was something that only one other 4th grader and I had, and that it ended after I left the hospital. Continue reading
Underweight is mean you have a body mass index that is below 18.5. Many folks think being fat is a health risk, they might think being too skinny is good. But being overly skinny carries its own health risks,too.
About four years ago, I happened to have poor absorptions of nutrients. At that time, my weight was unintentionally dropping, and I was overly losing weight. I lost almost 20 pounds in just one month. In school, classmates and teachers started to give me dirty looks. Even when I go to the grocery stores with my mom, people ooked at me like I was from a differernt planet. I felt so bad. I did not try to lose any weight, and I was eating as much as I used to, since then I even tried to eat as much as I could everytime till I throw up. My family started to worry about me because I eat so much, but still did not gain any weights. They forced me to stop exercise and rest, at that time, they would just put me to bed after dinners. Finnally they took me to the doctor. The doctor said that I might suffered with an eating disorder. But after he arranged the blood test and all of those long examations for me, he told my family that I was diabetic, and I had to go on drugs to control it. Because diabetes affects the way my body uses the blood surgar, I would lose weight if my body do not get enough of suger to generate, even I might be eating as much as usual.
For most people, losing a few pounds without meaning to could be a good thing to them. But it’s important to know when unexpected weight loss is a serious cause for concern. And sometimes, unexpected weight loss can be a sign of a depressive illness, many cancer cause unintentional weight loss as well.
There is a double standard when it comes to health and school. On one hand, a sick person is encouraged to stay home and get better. It is in the best interest of not only you, as the sick person, but also your peers, as the classroom is a haven for uncovered coughs and sneezes without the extra help. You can afford to miss one day! On the other, you really can’t.
Trigger warning: cancer, illness, hospice mention, food mention, weight mention
When you lose a parent as a young kid, you have a lot of questions. “Did daddy like ___?” “Would he like this band or that band or this food or this ____?” I often wonder now if it was hard for my mom to constantly get these questions from me that I only asked because I was insatiably curious and I knew remarkably little about who my dad was personally. A lot of what I remember about my dad (and about my childhood in general) comes in images and in imagined scenarios of how I believe things would have gone. I don’t have many truly genuine memories of my father, but the ones I do have I treasure and actively make sure I never forget. One thing I know for sure about my dad was that he was stick thin. I remember him crossing his bony legs in the morning in his bathrobe as he read the newspaper and drank his coffee. My mom told me that his legs were so bony that he had to sleep with a pillow between them; my aunt even bought him a catfish body pillow (my dad loved to fish, so it was a perfect gift) to put between his legs. It looked like a catfish. Seriously.
The other day we discussed death, and the appropriate ways in which we dispose of the dead… the human dead that is. Which got me thinking to how differently and similarly we treat our pets who die. Right before I came back to school for this semester, I’m talking the Friday before I moved in on a Monday, the stray my neighbors and I took care of passed away. He was sick; he had a really bad thyroid condition, but that’s not how he died. Continue reading
When I was growing up, my relationship to my asthma entirely shaped my relationship to my body. My body was something that had to be constantly monitored for any sign of symptoms. It had to be regulated and controlled. My body wasn’t a part of me, it was a setting–it was a dangerous situation that I had been placed in for unknown reasons; a house in the path of a hurricane. Continue reading
Unruly Bodies 