“I am not Lazy; I’m Ill”* Multiple sclerosis can feel like your body is gaslighting you. In high-stress mode, I lift my hands in front of my face to check if they are shaking. In Latino culture, we have a saying, “no me tiemba el pulso.” The literal translation is, “My pulse does…
Category: Medical Anthropology
The Long Hurt
The Long Hurt Here’s a joke I like: A caveman walks into a bar holding hands with a bear. The bartender asks, “What’s the deal here?” The caveman responds, “It’s a long story: bear with me.” That’s pretty good. Here’s another one: Two cavemen walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “What’ll it be?” The…
Sound(e)scaping Complex PTSD: The Self-Saboteur’s Memory
I temporarily lost my hearing a few months ago. Despite the world coming through in whispers, I learned I only see the world clearly through sound. I would not call this ability synesthesia, but it would make sense, like many other clinical terms, when applied to my life. I have tended to get…
What did it all mean? The United Nations’ first conference on water in over 50 years
On the morning of March 22nd, 2023, I watched from a balcony as the United Nations held its’ first dialogue on the human right to water in over 50 years. This once in a generation conference was convened to review the world’s progress in assuring Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), Clean Water and Sanitation for…
A Few Pages for a Life: Self-Portrait Through A Health Record Booklet
“It overflows with loose pages: medical prescriptions all mixed up, from my teenage to my adult years, from benign afflictions to serious troubles. All of those scattered fragments compose an anxious being. Rashes, panic attacks, chronic diarrhea. Nothing really changes, nothing really ever gets better. With slight variations, the same medication names come up again and again. 2005, 2013, 2021.”
Ethnographically Capturing the Autoimmune: Textures and Surplus
Ethnographically Capturing the Autoimmune: Textures and Surplus My New Year resolves to avoid fitting in within academic circles that reductively evaluate and lazily quantify my professional and personal contributions. I am tired of defending: my dissertation, my philosophies, and, ultimately, myself. Mentors and elders have confessed that the purpose of academic hazing is to…
Is this ‘For Us’? Doulas, Medical Racism and De-Potentializing Newborn Screening
It’s the second week of my rotation with a reproductive health advocacy organization. On my desktop, a grid of squares, icons of faces interspersed with actual faces, populate the screen. They are from the east and west coast, and some United States territories. More than half of them are Black or Latinx. Each of them…
On therapeutic nihilism
What we do is less about being right — though surely, that matters — and more about doing right by others, accompanying them in their journeys, marshaling the resources (cognitive, emotional, material) we have available to us to do so.
on justice & care
Michelle Munyikwa // Several months ago, I spent some clinical time working on a service with patients being evaluated for organ transplantation. Between the complex medical decision-making and challenging social negotiations that entail transplant evaluation, the social issues are infinitely more subjective and fraught. Everything from the substance use histories to the employment history to…
Embodying public health: Dressing the part
Madeleine Mant // The Canadian Public Health Association has identified 12 “great achievements” in public health since the early 1900s: Control of infectious disease Decline in deaths from coronary heart disease and stroke Family planning Healthier environments Healthier mothers and babies Motor-vehicle safety Recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard Safer and healthier foods…