The Vista of Years In this decade of my life, I find writing about my childhood in the 1960s to be comforting. I don’t write exclusively about that era; many of my personal essays chronicle more recent years with my husband and daughter and our rural life in Western North Carolina. But I often find myself recollecting my early years in my hometown, Marion, North Carolina, where I was born and still live. My childhood
Drugs after 60 – And Not The Fun Kind I react badly to most medications – sometimes badly enough to warrant a MedWatch report to FDA. A bit ironic, given that I spent my career in biotech writing submissions to FDA for product approvals. But knowing what I do about medical regulation, it did not surprise me to learn that the American Geriatric Society has developed the Beer’s List of approved medications they do not
Schroedinger’s Breast: Welcome to Mammogram-O-Rama When the mammogram center called the week after my scan, I knew it was not good news. Those folks don’t ring you up to say hi. “Your scan shows calcifications,” the woman said. “We need you to come in to see if we can resolve your case. We’d like you to wait after this mammogram and talk with the radiologist.” I scheduled the scan for the next week and spent the
A Next Life Bucket List “I have a next life bucket list: More sex, better singing voice, the ability to tan.” –Billie Berlin, interviewed in Aphrodite’s Pen: The Power of Writing Erotica after Midlife I don’t believe in reincarnation. I don’t believe in much, actually, except an objective external universe and that our task on earth is to apprehend it. So I’ve been startled lately, when confronted with the ills that flesh is heir to,
Roe v Wade – The Voices Project The Supreme Court handed down Dobbs v. Jackson in June 2022, reversing the 1975 Roe v. Wade decision that established abortion as a constitutional right. When women say, We will not go back to back-alley abortions, that raises the question: What was it like back then, before Roe? And what are the parallels with today, post-Dobbs? Less than a month after the Dobbs decision, two women announced plans
3 Steps to Push Back on Medical Ageism When my mother trained in the Cadet Nursing Corps during World War II, the young nurses were taught that physicians could do no wrong. But, paradoxically, if a doctor made a mistake, it was the nurses’ duty to cover for the doctor. Mom worked in the obstetrics ward of our local hospital when I was a child and came home with stories of doctors who stayed too
