Many people struggle to stay warm. They flee to Florida and Arizona, to Spain, pretty…
Dialysis 4: Mountains of Waste
Home hemodialysis ends. It always does, whether that person gets a transplant, changes over to in-center treatment or dies. Right now I should be mourning my loss but instead I am consumed by anger and disgust at the assault on the environment that home hemodialysis...
Widow’s Weeds 1: All That Time
Becoming a widow leaves me with an extraordinary amount of time. The Before Time I knew taking care of Dan was a full-time job: dialysis occupied four hours, four days a week, or a bit more. While the treatment itself, according to the computer in the Cycler, lasted...
Eating Invasively
“You are so brave!” The woman next in line at the Wegmans looked gobsmacked. I smiled at her as the fella behind the fish counter weighed and wrapped the fillets I had chosen. Did she find the idea of eating something called “snakehead” gross? Or was it a matter of...
One Person’s Nude
One pleasant morning, in the late 1980s, I started my work as the Education Curator at the Des Moines Art Center in Iowa. The phone rang; it appeared we had a problem with an upcoming tour of elementary school children who were also scheduled for a studio-art...