Archive for 2015

Progress isn’t moral

Critiques of recent scandals in Silicon Valley rightly place the blame on a culture that supports amorality, thoughtlessness, and ignorance rather than ill intent.[2] But the problem runs much deeper, because Silicon Valley’s amorality problem arises from the implicit and explicit narrative of progress companies use for marketing and that people use to find meaning […]

Migraine log – Botox round 3 edition

The first time I got Botox, I was in high school. I was part of a clinical trial, but I don’t remember what stage. I got very woozy and asked to lie down for a few minutes after the injections. My neurologist told me there was no need for that and audibly scoffed when I […]

Who would I be if I were not sick?

We like to think of ourselves as separate from our illness. We like to blame an outside source, whether it’s evil spirits or microbes, anything foreign, anything outside ourselves. We love to pinpoint the cause, to point to that tumor, that gene, that trauma, and say, Aha! There’s your problem! It’s comforting, because it reminds […]

Double bind, medical edition

If I look bad at the doctor’s, they think I’m exaggerating. If I look good at the doctor’s, they think I’m coping well enough that I don’t need treatment.

Well that sounds familiar

What’ll you live on? You can’t work in a factory now.” “They’ve promised me a disability rating. I don’t know if it’ll be Group 2 or Group 3. “Which one is Group 3, then?” asked Kostoglotov. He didn’t understand these disability groups, or any other civil regulations for that matter. “It’s one of these groups […]