I’ve never understood why some people are weird about wheelchairs. Why the pity? Why think needing to use one is one of the worst things someone could face? I blame my first power wheelchair for my inability to understand. I got it when I was about 9 from Make-A-Wish.
“Let me go, Mum,” I begged. It was Day 2 of a harrowing hospital stay. My chest had been hurting and feeling tight, nonstop. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I was tachycardic, with a heart rate in the 120s to the 140s. I needed a urinary catheter. I…
My introduction to a branching dialogue system in a role-playing game happened in 2019, the first time I played Dragon Age: Inquisition. The character I’d just created was a prisoner suspected of decimating a holy site in the fictional world of Thedas. As such, she was being interrogated.
“You and our baby brother should count yourselves lucky,” I told my brother Gabriel after my first appointment with a psychologist for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). “If I have ADHD, it means I have two disabilities and lost the genetic lottery twice, yet you guys are fine.” Gabriel laughed…
If you had a chance to fictionalize your life in a children’s book, how would you do it? Would you make the protagonist yourself, or would it be a loved one while you are relegated to a secondary role? Would you depict an ideal version of yourself, a character with…
“So, how are you? What have you been up to?” I asked my friend Phoebe Chua back in November. It’d been a decade since we last saw each other. But we’d spontaneously reconnected and decided to go to a movie together. I wanted to know everything about her life…
If I owned a calendar, its December through April would be stained with tears. The square where Dec. 16, 2023, lands would have angry-looking ink blotches on it — to represent how I felt on my 25th birthday. My ex-girlfriend and I broke up on that day. I cursed her…
When you’re living with SMA, you quickly learn that you cannot function without someone else’s help. One of my earliest memories is of a nurse telling me that she’d asked doctors to remove my nasogastric tube for me. I must’ve been 3 at the time. My parents weren’t…
Taylor Swift, the light of my life, the one artist who’s gotten me through all my toughest eras, once wrote: “So make the friendship bracelets/ Take the moment and taste it/ You’ve got no reason to be afraid.” I took that advice last month. Well, except for…
“Sherry, did you forget about your evening medication yesterday?” my caregiver asked as she held up a plastic bag with a vitamin pill and painkillers. It was Feb. 17, the day after I attended an Ed Sheeran concert with my brother Gabriel. In response, my faced looked like that…
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