Free Sick by Ben Holtzman Page B

pressure on my hip several hundred times a day. I was really starting to understand just how serious this disease was years after being “cured.”
    I dropped 85 pounds within the next year.

    Now, at twenty-three, I wish I could say, “Oh, I dropped all this weight and I feel amazing and life is perfect!” That’s not true, of course. With every disease and every illness comes struggle, even years after the initial symptoms have been treated. There’s a reason why remission exists.
    I could have chosen to let the disease take me over. I could have taken a job that would later cost me months of surgery and physical therapy. I could have become an automated medication machine, thinking the future of my pain lies within a pill. I could have stayed at 265 and had the replacement done by 30, but chances were I’d gain even more weight after the surgery and end up bed-ridden by middle age.
    Life, as I knew it, could have ceased to exist.
    So, instead of letting the disease beat me, I’ve decided to beat it. It’s a day-by-day process and some days are naturally better than others. I still ache when it rains, I still get pops and cracks (especially when going up stairs), I still have days where looking at my scar in the mirror causes more pain than the joint itself, but in the end…I’m living life how I want to.
    This is my one shot, and it lies in my hands…or in my case, my hip.

CLEARING HEAD: A STORY ABOUT MIGRAINES
BRITTANY SHOOT
    How I have long conceptualized my migraines has perhaps the greatest impact on how I experience them.
    For some, migraines are visual impairments, temporary blindness, and nausea. For others, the pain – either in your temples, across your forehead, or down your neck and shoulders – makes you twist into strange positions, the oddest pressure points acting as temporary relief. Some people avoid certain trigger foods and alcohol. Some disappear for days at a time into dark, cold, quiet rooms, the only respite from the hellish onslaught of a variety of symptoms and effects.
    Speaking from a perspective of Western medicine, migraines can be caused by neurological disorders, head or spinal cord trauma, the strain of undiagnosed poor eyesight. Various persuasions of Eastern medicine will blame the pain on internalized stress, bodily imbalances, a build-up of toxins, misaligned qi, and the obvious bad sleep and diet. In my experience, migraines are often the result of causes from both philosophies.
    Migraines are an isolating condition because of the literal solitude that can be required for healing. In my case, a cold, dark, quiet room is usually necessary, which means you not only get to enter a potentially boring, lonely space for an indefinite amount of time; others around you are also forced to be quiet and live/work in dimly lit spaces. You also have no idea when the pain might end. Your medication might not work. You might not have medication. It could be another day before this subsides. You have to start canceling things. I usually end up apologizing to several people.
    My battle with migraines began when I was around eight years old. My family life was less than ideal, with a stepmother who regularly berated me behind mydisbelieving father’s back and a mother who wasn’t convinced such a young child could get such ferocious headaches. Few people in my family believed in my soon-to-be chronic condition, and from the beginning, this established an atmosphere of guilt, shame, and quick fixes to feel better again as soon as possible with no emphasis on the root causes, what could make stress manifest in such a difficult way for a sensitive pre-pubescent girl.
    Two main things seem to complicate the illness the most: that it is mostly an invisible condition, not easily seen and identified by others; and that while many people experience a wide range of difficult headaches and occasional nausea, most people are not rendered helpless for