My late friend and colleague Michael Morale liked to utter a phrase to me whenever I had an aquatic therapy session: “Get strong.” Michael spoke with a thick Texan accent and the utmost sincerity as he emphasized those words. He fully believed that…
Embracing My Inner Alien - a column by Kevin Schaefer
In June, my parents and I huddled into our accessible van to head to the annual Cure SMA conference in Orlando, Florida. It’s always my most anticipated time of the year, filled with seeing friends, meeting new people, and spending late nights at the hotel lounge and by the…
A former caregiver and friend once told me that she’d never spent a night in the hospital for any kind of illness or injury. Despite working as a nurse and surrounding herself with medical scenarios on a daily basis, she’d never experienced a hospitalization from the patient’s lens. That concept…
The Apple TV series “Shrinking” features an ensemble of messy characters. Lead protagonist Jimmy (played by Jason Segel) is a widower who struggles to care for his teenage daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell). As a therapist, he likes helping others, but he has a hard time taking his own…
Like many pop culture enthusiasts, I currently devote my Thursday nights to the HBO Max series “The Pitt.” Hailed as the most realistic medical drama on TV, the show follows an emergency department crew in a Pittsburgh hospital, led by veteran physician Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (played by Noah…
This post contains spoilers for the final season of Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” My level of devotion to the Netflix series “Stranger Things” dates back to the show’s premiere in the summer of 2016. As soon as the first season dropped, I was hooked. As a love letter to…
In her anthology “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century,” the late activist and writer Alice Wong offers profound insight into the power of storytelling. She says in one of her essays, “Storytelling can be more than a blog post, essay, or book. It can be an…
“It must be nice sitting in that thing all day.” Having lived with SMA for 32 years and used a power wheelchair since I was 2 years old, I’ve heard some version of this comment many times. Those who read my column regularly know that I enjoy making…
The 2023 film “American Fiction” follows a frustrated writer named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (portrayed by Jeffrey Wright). While his books receive critical praise, his lack of commercial success stems from his resistance to writing more popular literature. When Ellison visits a bookstore, he groans when he finds his…
Now that a new school year is ramping up, my mom’s volunteer day care service for my niece, Lily, and nephew, Lucas, is back in full swing. My sister, an elementary school teacher, had all-day meetings this week, and school doesn’t start until next week. As such, our house has…
