Five years ago today, the phone rang early in the morning. “We have lungs,” the voice on the other end announced. The first words I heard that day were months in the making. My mom, Holly, had been…
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My friend Chase and I sat in my treehouse one sunny afternoon looking across the arid valley between my childhood home and the towering crest of the Sierra Nevada. We were 10. We noticed a plume of smoke rising…
It took 26 months, but I finally got COVID-19. In that time, I’ve felt many strong emotions about the pandemic and its effects. Every part of life has been touched by this disease and the wildly varied…
As a millennial, I came of age with the internet. I remember the thrill of choosing the perfect screen name for AOL Instant Messenger before going to camp. (luv4pigs31, if you were wondering.) In eighth grade, I created my…
When I was growing up, I loved the show “MythBusters.” I tuned in regularly to watch Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman bust famous myths and answer burning questions like, “Will using a cellphone near a gas pump cause…
Have you ever gotten into the car, started driving, and then snapped out of a trance at your destination with no memory of the trip? Let’s call it driving on autopilot. Relying on your reflexes to operate…
I have several roles here at Bionews, the parent company that publishes Pulmonary Fibrosis News and other rare disease websites. I started with this humble column and eventually joined the forums team as a co-moderator. My most recently…
The holidays can be a time of joy and celebration, magic and wonder, traditions and new beginnings — but also grief and pain. These things can exist all at once, but it can be hard to admit…
The holidays are complicated. And getting in the holiday spirit with a chronic illness, in the dead of winter, in the middle of a pandemic, can be, well, challenging. If you are struggling to feel the magic this…
The pressure we put on ourselves to live full, “successful” lives can be debilitating. Transplant recipients can be burdened with extremely high expectations for what post-transplant life should look like. Organ transplantation is an incredible gift, but those expectations…
Growing up as an only child, I’ve spent my whole life hearing what one Washington Post writer calls “a slew of profoundly unflattering and occasionally contradictory stereotypes.” I’ve been told many times how lucky I am that…
In a society that shuns openly speaking about death and dying, it’s hard to find words to grapple with the terror of the unknown and the threat of imminent grief. It can be even harder to find a…
On Mother’s Day in 2019, I walked into the ICU on the ninth floor of University of California, San Francisco’s Parnassus campus for the last time. It had been a month since my mom, Holly, was discharged from the…
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