Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with fentanyl and other pain medications. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. “You really know pain, huh?” someone asked me, eyes wide with concern. In response to their offering me…
Wandering the Lines – a Column by Sherry Toh
“You must have dropped the baby.” That sentence was one of the many knives flung at my mother’s chest when I was diagnosed with SMA. She was 24, barely an adult. I was a difficult pregnancy, born a full month before I was due. My birth would’ve been even…
Unintentionally, last year, most of my immediate family bought me Christmas gifts with the same theme. My brother, Gabriel, got me a handmade blue-and-white scarf from China. Mom got me a sheer-ish white shawl. My stepdad got me a red knitted cardigan. See what they’re all aiming for yet? Together,…
For a video games journalist, I haven’t played many video games recently. Mostly, the absence of gaming in my life isn’t my fault. My laptop is almost four years old, and it’s quite determined to remind me of its age. If I were to anthropomorphize it, I would say it…
My mother tried persuading me to get a hospital bed at home for years. “Your uncle can help us source one that the pediatric hospital doesn’t want,” she said at one point. “Our neighbor doesn’t need hers anymore. She offered it to us. Do you want it?” Mom asked…
By the time I was 19, I believed I had escaped my reproductive cycle. In fact, I had developed a superiority complex about it. While my friends complained about cramps and cravings, I laughed in their faces. It’s not like I was reading studies on young women with…
A stool. A chain. A person’s body. None of these things is what I’d usually call “art materials,” but that’s exactly how contemporary Singaporean artist Amanda Heng sees them. During a recent trip to the National Gallery Singapore, I discovered “Walking The Stool,” a 1999 performance by…
To its credit, “The Beauty,” a new sci-fi, body-horror miniseries from Ryan Murphy, co-creator of “American Horror Story” and other acclaimed projects, dives deeper into the topic of genetic editing and disability than most sci-fi shows I’ve seen. Typically, as in “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” genetic editing is framed either as…
I’m a lot of people’s favorite something. That’s not bragging, it’s just a statement of fact. Ask my mother who her favorite child is, or some of the nurses at my usual hospital’s neurology ward who their favorite patient is, or some of my friends who their favorite friend or…
“Do you remember when Dad took us kite flying?” I asked my brother, Gabriel. We were on a train ride home from the Sands Theatre, where we’d just seen an international production of Disney’s live musical, “Beauty and the Beast.” “Nope,” he said. “I thought that was with the…
