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“Are you comfortable, Alyssa?” my surgeon asked while gently leaning over me as I lay on my left side. My quick-witted response assured her there was nothing comforting about a needle in my spine. But with clenched fists and deep breaths, I was managing. After all, I had…

Second in a series. Read part one.  This week, I sought advice from my aunt, Heidi McLaughlin, because she is a thoughtful, wise person. Like me, she is a writer. RB: If I didn’t have SMA and you could only give me one piece of advice about…

It takes a family to navigate SMA. All five of us play a role in helping the household run smoothly. Mostly, however, the final responsibility lies with the parents. Ava and Henry are 11 and 9, respectively. Ella is 8. When one of them…

Across social media platforms right now, there’s a trend where people post pictures of themselves from 10 years ago next to current ones. The idea is to see how much people have changed over a decade and to laugh at embarrassing old images. It’s been entertaining,…

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I don’t think I could live in the middle of nowhere. My parents want nothing more than to raise a few goats in rural Wisconsin, where they recently bought their “forever home,” a small farmhouse with decent acreage. I, however, would…

Hello. My name is Alyssa Silva, and on Jan. 7, I failed my vertigo test. Again. For the sixth or seventh time. Here’s a little useless fact about me: I’m a terrible test taker. In college, my final grades were saved by papers and projects because I always…

I go to my family and friends for advice before anyone else. They’ve always given me tremendous input, but how is that affected by SMA, if at all? In the following interview, the first in a series, I’ll explore how SMA impacts the way people perceive me, as well as…

Technology is a wonderful thing. It’s something that is a part of all of our lives and can have tremendous benefits. Ella has her own iPad and spends time playing games, looking up videos of things she enjoys learning about, and texting us…

“Well, I certainly hope this little incident hasn’t put you off flying, miss,” says Christopher Reeve in the 1978 “Superman” film. “Statistically speaking, of course, it’s still the safest way to travel.” Well, if you’re Lois Lane and the Man of Steel comes to your…

Professional writing has always been a bit of a dream job. As a college freshman, I realized that my idea of writing didn’t exactly coincide with academic writing, which had me taking juvenile literature classes and, the bane of my existence in 2013, British literature courses.