Fiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 The Swan Floating Serenely by Niamh O'Brien y diagnosis sat in my hand, a thin paper sheet covered in words that meant nothing to me but broken. The piece of paper made my pain, my struggle, it made it real. It wasn’t all in my head. Or rather it was. My diagnosis meant yellow and white pills. It meant leaving school early to go to the doctors. It meant that ...
Read MoreFiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Birthday Boy by William Cass y son Danny’s twenty-sixth birthday. Developmental age, though, perhaps three months old. Severely-disabled/medically-fragile since birth. Diagnosis: undetermined genetic syndrome. Seizure started his day early. I knew, startled awake to the alarm of his sat monitor signaling a rapid spike in heart rate. By the time I’d hurried the eight steps from my bedroom into his, the convulsions were already subsiding, so just a short ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Nonfiction Harvey Is Inside My Head | Deborah Meltvedt Obligate Ram Ventilation | Steph Amir Lighter | Diane D. Gillette You Don’t Know How It Feels | Scott Martin A Nightmare Before Christmas: Shared Decisions in the ER | Tyler Jorgensen Merry Migraines | Erin Darrow It’s Not the Final Answer | Wendy Kennar I Was Really Scared Last Night | Karen Buley A Brief History of My Living Room Couch | Meghan Beaudry Self-Portrait as a Suicide Attempt | Joanna Acevedo
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 A Brief History of My Living Room Couch by Meghan Beaudry pring, 2013. We bought the couch on a Saturday from a store that hocked last season’s Ashley loveseats. It was our first major purchase as a couple. The furniture was new, but discount-- like us. My husband and I were recently married and even more recently not broke. A tall stick of a salesman whose tongue tripped ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Obligate Ram Ventilation by Steph Amir d walked past the building many times before, but hadn’t paid it much attention. I was about nine years old, and at a loose end because my best friend wasn’t at school that day. I was wandering around the schoolyard looking for an alternate playmate, when I noticed the bricks on the corner of the sports-equipment shed. Rather than having neat 90-degree corners, ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 Self-Portrait as a Suicide Attempt by Joanna Acevedo e never said: You will not get better. He would never say that. My psychiatrist was, and always will be, a saint. It was no coincidence that his first name was Angel. But the prognosis was the same. What I have—Ultra Rapid Cycle Bipolar 1—doesn’t improve with time. Actually, it’s a progressive illness, and it continues to ravage its sufferers as ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 I Was Really Scared Last Night by Karen Buley was sitting here reading my book and everyone left, and I can’t find the baby!” Panic permeated my eighty-eight-year-old mother’s words when she called one Sunday evening in July 2020. “They’re gone.” A fierce burn seized my belly as I imagined my mother, alone in her independent living apartment, one hundred twenty miles away. “They were there last week,” I reminded ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 You Don't Know How It Feels by Scott Martin o borrow a line from You Don’t Know How It Feels by Tom Petty, “I woke up in between a memory and a dream.” The last thing I remember is the anxious look on my mom’s face as she watched my stepfather drive me to the ER. Somewhere beneath the nausea and fatigue was the urge to tell her everything ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 It's Not the Final Answer by Wendy Kennar fter a year and a half of talking with one doctor after another, it was Dr. W, a rheumatologist, who explained my mystery illness. “It’s an autoimmune disease called Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease. UCTD,” he told us. My husband and I had no idea what that meant except for one thing. My gut instinct told me that not knowing those letters, not ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #12: Diagnosis December 31st, 2022 A Nightmare Before Christmas: Shared Decisions in the ER by Tyler Jorgensen went for pizza and beer with some friends tonight after work. My wife and kids came too. The pizza came wood-fired from a food truck and the beer cold and crisp from a micro-brew tap and labeled Honey Blonde Ale. The kids ran around the brewery grounds in the rain inventing “zombie tag” games and ...
Read More