Category Archives: Travel

The Little Mermaid is My Favorite Disney Movie, and I Finally Figured Out Why

Posted in Body Image, Disney, Movies, Personal, Travel by

Ever since I saw The Little Mermaid as a young girl (it came out when I was two), I was immediately entranced. I dressed as a mermaid that Halloween and belted out “Part of Your World” on the daily.

But as I grew up and became more aware of feminism ideology, I started to feel shame for the love of a movie that seemed to completely go against that ideology. Here is a young princess with the underworld at her fin, and she decides to give up all of that, including her most prized possession—her voice—for a man she barely knows.

Yeah… it’s hard to reconcile that as an adult. But here’s the thing—that’s not what drew me to this film. I didn’t run around the house with an Eric doll pining for the day I could find my own Eric and be led into another world. No, I idealized Ariel for having the guts to leave everything behind to explore something new and find her sense of belonging.

Let me break it down. Here are the real reasons I love Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Continue reading →

Saying Goodbye to Gizmo (My Insulin Pump)

Posted in Cost, Diabetes, Exercise, Insurance, Medical Supplies, Personal, Travel, Type 1 by

As much as I love Gizmo, I’m kind of tired of my insulin pump. I know, I know, I shouldn’t complain. Having a $6,000 piece of equipment attached to me 24/7 has been an immense help in the management of my disease over the past four years.

But I am starting to understand why fellow Type 1 diabetics take a break from the pump every now and then and sometimes forever. It’s not easy having something attached to you 24/7. Right now I carry three devices around with me to manage my disease: my insulin pump (aka Gizmo), my continuous glucose monitoring receiver (aka Cosmo), and my glucometer. That doesn’t count my phone.

Gizmo is about the size of a pager. I usually conceal it clipped to my bra strap or waistline of my skirt or pants. The clip is currently taped together with duct tape, and the Medtronic label is practically worn away. I’ve had Gizmo for four and a half years. I’ve only had to replace it once when the battery container froze shut. For the most part I have no complaints.

But lately I’ve been more annoyed with Gizmo than happy. Take for example: Continue reading →

Evelyn Sophie: Independent Woman

Posted in Personal, Travel, Women's Health by

I would feel better if you were a man and as independent as you are.

I stand in line at Reagan National, waiting to board my Southwest plane to Dallas. It was 40-degrees when I left my apartment this morning, but I dress plainly in jeans, my favorite color blotted flats, and a pink vintage t-shirt. In the fluorescent light, passersby can see my pale pink bra underneath. I fold my black jacket in my arms while my backpack pushes against the bar separating me from the boarding line to the gate attendant behind me.

A middle aged woman with blond waves next to me looks down at my right hand and smiles.

“Oh that’s interesting,” she says, pointing to my mood ring, now an Ohio River green. When I bought it in a thrift store in Louisville, I picked it out for its design (and I have always had a thing for mood rings – the bracelet on my left hand, which I stole from my mom, always emanates two mood stones with a pearl stone in the middle). I didn’t realize until later that the ring’s intricate silver design was in the shape of a dolphin. Who doesn’t love dolphins?

“It’s pretty,” she clarifies. I smile and say thanks. I acknowledge my normal reception to her intersection into my life. Usually I’m awkward, uttering a mild something or try to force a half-smile. But I’m finally leaving this DC life and heading towards the 80-degree, sunny weather of Dallas, where distant family also reside. I am happy even if tired from a 7 a.m. Saturday wake-up call. Continue reading →

My Life With Diabetes: Am I in Control?

Posted in Cost, Diabetes, Travel, Type 1 by

I walk down the cracked sidewalk along Wisconsin Avenue, past the Starbucks and Regal movie theater in Bethesda. My fingers start to tingle, and my heart rate increases. Suddenly I feel extremely weak. Each step is an effort, and I feel a steel box closing in around my heart. I am out of breath. My limbs start to shake, and my vision is less reliable. I can’t read the street sign in front of me. I stop at the next intersection and look for the glucose tablets in my purse.

I scramble to chew four of these tablets quickly, leaving a powdery residue on the tips of my fingers. I lean against the side of a brick building and call my supervisor. I’m supposed to be in a meeting in two minutes but until I get my blood sugar back up, there’s no way I’m making it back to the office without help. I’m only a five-minute walk away, but right now my vision is blurry and my hands are shaking.

My supervisor doesn’t answer his phone so I call my work colleague and let her know of the situation. I usually don’t tell people when I’m having a low blood sugar, but in this case, I realize it’s the safest thing I can do in case I do have a seizure in the middle of the street. My work colleague has severe allergies so we’ve both agreed to be each other’s medical back-up. I know where her EpiPen is, and she knows what to do if I pass out from low or high blood sugar. Continue reading →

From Here to There Yet Nowhere

Posted in Animals, Mental Health, Personal, Travel by

When I’m in Louisville, Kentucky, on the border of southern Indiana, I see large Maple trees and gravel pathways lined with yellow patches of grass and fallen crisp leaves. A Beagle-Greyhound mix runs in front of me, sniffing at the brown speckled frog camouflaged by rocks and pebbles along the path. A man of 20, just starting out in the world, lights a cigarette nearby. And another man of 26 attempts to restrain the dog and keep her out of the way of the oncoming cyclist.

When I’m in Bethesda, Maryland, on the border of Washington, DC, I hear ambulance sirens and beeping horns of SUVs and BMWs. I sidestep an upraised brick in the sidewalk and bypass an orange cone of a construction zone, the latest in a series of luxury condo high rises. I pass by commuters listening to headphones and carrying laptop bags with their eyes glued to smart phones. I also attempt to drown out the noise of the city with my mood’s latest trend – this time dubstep. And then I move out of the way of an oncoming cyclist.

Belonging

More than a year ago, I made the move from Baltimore to DC. And four years before that I made the move from Cincinnati to Baltimore. And five years prior to that, I left my hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

So exactly 10 years ago, a few weeks from today, I ventured from my roots with no plans to return. Of my two brothers and various family members, I have so far been the only one to do so (not including those who left before me). But what I didn’t realize then was what I would be giving up and what I would never be able to have again: a home. Continue reading →

‘It’s All About Perspective’

Posted in Body Image, Diabetes, Mental Health, Personal, Relationships, Travel by

More than a week ago, I was in Louisville, Kentucky for my 10-year high school reunion. In addition to that, I spent a wonderful extended weekend with family and friends celebrating birthdays and life’s successes. And all of this while sleeping on a cot (because like myself, my parents do not waste space — as soon as I left for college my old bedroom was turned into a bedroom for my brothers and then an office for my parents).

And although I may complain every time I visit about the sleeping accommodations and the fact that I lay exposed in the living or dining room, I am secretly proud of my parents for not keeping my bedroom as a shrine, for making the most of what they have.

But since that weekend, I have endured countless awful days of stress and anxiety. And I sank into a small depressive hole, questioning what I was doing with my life and why my personal and professional lives could not co-exist in the same city.

Photo Aug 17, 2 16 46 PM

Devastating News

That is until I learned one of my best friends was almost beaten to death on his bike over a cell phone. Suddenly my questions about a meaningful existence seemed irrelevant. Because all that mattered is that my best friend made it out okay. All that mattered was that someone I loved would survive this tragedy without too much scarring. Continue reading →

‘The Examined Life’ and the Printed Word

Posted in Cost, Diabetes, Mental Health, Personal, Travel, Type 1 by

Today marks the third and final day of The Examined Life Conference: The Writing, Humanities, and Arts of Medicine, hosted at the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City, Iowa.

Rare medical book textAmong the gorgeous 70-degree weather and the nostalgia of walking along the paved pathways of a college campus, in the last three days, I feel like I have trespassed on history, found a deeper self-identity with my chronic illness, tripped on the psychedelic words of poetry, and discovered a new direction for health care reform.

I admit I wasn’t familiar with the arena of narrative medicine before arriving here. In fact, I wasn’t sure what to expect coming from a creative writing background myself and only having been pushed into the field of health care by my disease. But amidst fellow creative writers and those managing their own chronic conditions were health care professionals writing about it. Some write about their own personal stories — others attempt to peel back the layers of patient stories.

For the first time since working with CancerFree KIDS back in Cincinnati, I felt the power of writing, not just for my own therapeutic means, but for those who may not know how to tell their story, but so desperately want to. And how that story can change the future of a system that currently encourages disparity, neglect, and hopelessness.

Continue reading →

Spanish Moss

Posted in Diabetes, Personal, Travel by

I struggle to pull the hood of my raincoat over my head while trying to sidestep patches of black ice on my walk home from work. I have returned to the wintry mix of Maryland in March from the warmth of 80-degree sun in Tampa, Florida. I am not comforted by the fact that the gray chunk of ice blocking the sidewalk near my apartment’s back entrance is now two inches taller than when I left it last week.

And now the meteorologists are calling for three to five inches of snow tomorrow. I snuggle up to Norm and my electric blanket and hope the office will close before I attempt to make the trek into work. Just a few days ago, I was sitting on my friend’s porch in a t-shirt and shorts with my computer in my lap and a Russian blue kitty meowing at me from atop the closed Jacuzzi.

It was my first true vacation (family visits don’t count) in four years. And since my birthday falls in the worst month of winter and I happen to have a good friend who moved and bought a house in southern Florida, it seemed like the perfect getaway. Mother Nature still has a way of messing with me, though. For most of my visit, the sky was overcast and the temperatures were in the low to mid-60s, but it wasn’t snowing so my friend and I made the most of it.

Florida Oasis

I used to have another kind of Florida oasis. I was in a long-distance relationship for almost two years. While I was finishing graduate school in Baltimore, he was attempting to get a job in the field of digital animation and visual effects in Orlando. I graduated, but he never got the job so he moved back to Baltimore, and we moved in together. Continue reading →

Resistance: A Perspective on Larson’s ‘Love and Terror in Berlin’

Posted in Personal, Travel by

It’s dark, below 10 degrees, and I’m starting to feel comfortable in this DC neighborhood, surrounded by fellow commuters. It helps that I made this exact trek a few nights ago. The sidewalks near the Dupont metro are mostly clear of snow and ice, and even though I make no eye contact with passersby, I feel a sense of solidarity with this community of young professionals.

We’re just trying to get by, doing the best that we can, and hope that we don’t fall.

But halfway on my way to meeting my friend for dinner on 14th Street, I come across a stretch of ice. My mind is on this book I just finished on the train, “In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin” by Erik Larson that provides a third-person account of the U.S. ambassador William Dodd’s stay in Berlin prior to World War II.

As I later told my friend at dinner, the book captures the building momentum of a culture that preceded one of the greatest atrocities in history. Even though I tend to be a bit of a history buff, especially around that time period, I was still amazed by the tension and struggles that plagued Berlin years before events like Kristallnacht even happened. And the world let it happen. Continue reading →