Columns

Writing Keeps This Caregiver Sane

I stumbled into my future profession when I took a creative writing class as a junior in high school. I took the class because it was an elective, something easy. In other words, it was what my teenage self considered a “blow-off,” something that didn’t require studying. Studying, I thought…

Learn How to Party On, Dude

One of summer’s guilty pleasures is watching mindless movies. On a recent weekend, Jill and I watched “Bill and Ted Face the Music,” which is so egregiously and heinously bad, it’s good, dude. (This is how the time-traveling characters talk to each other. Needless to say, the dialogue is…

As Caregivers, We Can Choose to Be Empathetic and Patient

My mom is dying. She’s 90, has dementia, can’t walk, yells angrily at times, and lives in an assisted living home, where visitors are frowned upon because of the COVID-19 threat. Several days ago, an ambulance picked her up because she had vomited and was unresponsive. Several hours after visiting…

Telemedicine Makes Life Easier for Patients

Last year, I wrote about the possibility of telemedicine visits for Huntington’s patients with the Huntington’s Disease Society of America’s Center of Excellence in Chicago. My wife, Jill, and I were excited about this possibility because she has “white coat syndrome.” As someone who has witnessed Jill’s anxiety,…

Striving to Be as Carefree as a Kitten

I have been working from home since March and likely will continue to do so until next summer. Persephone, my first cat, has loved this. She’s always been pretty needy, mostly because of her extreme fear of missing out. Anytime my boyfriend or I shut the…

Living Outside the Box

If you could go anywhere on vacation, would you take your time planning the perfect trip? Would you look at all of the travel websites in hopes of finding the most interesting places to go? Would you spend large amounts of money to see all of the typical tourist attractions?…