Day 285:Five years ago

This summer will be the filth summer since she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My sister calls that year our family's Year of Hell for good reason. She was diagnosed in June and during her first week home after her mastectomy in September my dad had a heart attack from the stress of worrying about...

Day 284 : My Wheelchair Should Not Define Me, Either As Asexual or As A Goldfish

  My whole childhood and adolescence I'm pretty sure my grandma believed I'd end up a spinster she thought this in spite of the fact that I had a boyfriend in high school. Why? Because in the era in which she she grew up the only disabled people who were treated with any kind of...

Day 283 IV Needles and Tattoo Ink or How My Dad Came to Be Ok With My Ink and Other Observations

At this point in my life I'm pretty sure that the number of  times I've been poked with a needle during a medical procedure is more than the number of birthdays I've had.  I started kicking the idea of body ink around when I was about fourteen after  one of my surgeries put me in...

Day 282: Rape: It Happens to the Disabled Too

Rape culture is so prevalent in American society that most of us unknowingly endorse it regularly. The girl who gets raped while drinking too much is not to blame for her rape because she chose to ignore the limits of her alcohol tolerance, the rapist is at fault. A woman gets raped walking through a...

Day 281 Life, Death, and Disney : The Remix

I first heard the word cancer connected to someone I knew when I was 10 or 11 years old. Anthony was a family friend who had an on-again off-again battle with leukemia for a large part of his childhood and adult life. I think I knew Anthony for a little over a year before I...