In retrospect, my girlfriend must’ve been laughing at the ridiculous glee in my texts. “DISABILITY REPRESENTATION!” I practically shrieked at her, my fingers almost tripping over my keyboard. We were watching the first of the three 60th-anniversary “…
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For the past several months, I’ve been obsessed with stories about financial fraud by perpetrators of elaborate schemes. Hence, I fell down the rabbit hole of the story of Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced CEO and founder of Theranos,…
As you get older, proper rest tends to become an appointment you have to schedule. It’s something you have an abundance of when you’re an infant, but its presence steadily decreases in your life once school, work, and social…
I had different plans for this week’s column. As I write this, I have a spreadsheet open with my column schedule. Next to the deadline date I’ve typed “TFIOS column,” which stands for “The Fault in Our Stars,”…
Editor’s note: This column discusses suicide. Please find resources for help at the end of the column. I wish the call had been an April Fools’ prank. As readers of my column will know, I’ve been very vocal about…
Back in 2019, I signed up for an online women’s health and rights course by women’s rights activist and Stanford teacher Anne Firth Murray. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision; I’m not even sure I was truly interested in it…
How would you expect someone with a disability to react upon reading an account of a nondisabled man essentially telling a disabled woman she shouldn’t exist? Would you expect them to react with despair? Fear? Rage? I reacted by…
If Broadway’s Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a musical based on my column, the word “value” would be a leitmotif with its own melody. Anyone who reads my column regularly will know I talk about the value of disabled folks…
Like all young girls, I was part of the target demographic for romance. Disney and Barbie movies, pop music, young adult novels, TV dramas — you get the idea. Romance was sold to me everywhere, and I bought it…
The morning of Dec. 4, 2020, my life changed forever. My best friend, fellow columnist, and work wife, Brianna Albers, burst into our private Discord channel. “YOU SHOULD APPLY,” she yelled at me through the messaging platform. Attached…
“I’m doing good, I’m on some new s**t/ Been saying ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’” These lyrics opened Taylor Swift’s song “the 1” and her 2020 album “Folklore.” I thought them fitting…
“Lord, what will become of me/ Once I’ve lost my novelty?” was the original lyric sung in Taylor Swift’s “Nothing New,” a bonus track she included with her recent remaster of her…
Let’s start this story about Evrysdi (risdiplam) from the beginning. About a year ago, the chronic neuropathy in my scalp that had been bothering me for three years worsened to a point of concern. It started as a…
