The Emotional Support Daughter
— Emma Schmitz

You may have noticed that September is Pulmonary Fibrosis Awareness Month. Here at Pulmonary Fibrosis News, we’ve been running a social media campaign that showcases patients and their loved ones in our community. Additionally,…

As I write this, my parents, Diana and Jack, are likely hearing muffled morning sounds from the guest room down the hall. Hard whispers from 4-year-old Jack, tired groans from 2-year-old Maeve, and gurgles…

The moment my parents, Diana and Jack, were in the clear two weeks after their second COVID-19 vaccine, they hopped on a plane to see their three grandchildren in Illinois. This was about a…

I was born into a risk management family. My parents built a mom and pop insurance agency into a regional empire, and now my brother and I are deep in it, too. This…

My mom, Diana, relied on a plug-in oxygen machine to breathe, and the power was going to be shut off for days. This was back…

Last June, my parents and I stayed in a house in San Francisco while my mom, Diana, recovered from a single-lung transplant.

My mom, Diana, long hoped to outlive both her mother and grandmother. She accomplished that goal some years ago, and thanks to her single-lung transplant last May…

Spending a month in San Francisco is a good way to get out of your head. Some people come to the mountains, where I live, to clear their minds. I like to…

I don’t know if humans will recover from this pandemic: the lack of touch, the resocializing to keep our distance, the physical isolation. I have dreams where I’m in groups of happy…

“Did you wash your hands?” That’s a question I was very familiar with long before the COVID-19 pandemic. My mom, Diana, is an obsessive hand-washer. She is also obsessive…

Care-cation: an extended stay in a place away from home to care for a loved one in need. In the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, we had a week or…