Alexus writes about her experience with Huntington’s disease. Alexus is all too familiar with the disease: her grandfather and mother have it, and she recently learned she does, too. Alexus graduated from MIT with a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and minors in health policy and management. Currently, she’s working in life science consulting in the Boston area.
Over this past holiday, my wonderful parents got me the Nintendo Switch and the new Pokemon game (specifically Shield, because it had cooler Pokemon). Yes, I am aware this makes me geeky, but the game is amazing. As soon as I started playing, I couldn’t…
At around 1 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2019, my aunt was pronounced dead. She had been waiting with her son in their car outside their house for a storm to abate when a tree fell on the car. Fortunately, my cousin was unharmed. My aunt had…
While traveling to a recent event on the T, greater Boston’s public transport system, I felt as if I were in a generic movie about a city-dwelling 20-something. I love living in Boston. While it is not as big as Chicago or New York, after…
Some moments are so perfect that you wish time would stop so that some part of you could live in that moment forever. These moments can be significant milestones, such as receiving word that you’ve been accepted into your dream school or hearing that you landed the job…
I was recently invited to talk about my column on Help 4 HD Live!, a weekly podcast for the Huntington’s disease community. The host, Lauren Holder, asked me how the revelation that I am a gene carrier has affected my relationships. I told her I…
In a previous column, I wrote about how I believe it is likely for a medical breakthrough to happen by the time I am old enough to have symptoms. I need to add a caveat to that statement: It is only true if there are people doing…
As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, my mother received her Huntington’s diagnosis almost a year ago. My parents waited to tell me until I arrived home for winter break from school because they didn’t want the news to affect the end of my semester. I…
I’m a logical person. I tend to look at the numbers and make a rational assessment of a situation. But I also want to be happily surprised rather than disappointed, so I expect the worst to be true. I describe it as being a realist…
I am amazed at the differences in the ways our brains work and the variations that exist in our thought processes. My roommate and I were discussing this subject, and she told me that she thinks in pictures. My thoughts, on the other hand, manifest as words.
In my previous column, I talked about the day I received my diagnosis. I got through the following weeks by telling myself that nothing in my life had changed, and that I had no choice but to move forward. I knew time was not going to stop…
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