Gilead

ableism, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is defined as discrimination or prejudice against people with disabilities. A disability, also according to the Merriam Webster dictionary, is defined as a condition that damages or limits a person's physical or mental abilities. I don't typically identify myself as a person with a disability. part of that comes from I don't like the word disability, and part of that is because my condition doesn't have as visible side effects, like the kind one would get with being in a wheel chair or having a condition such as Down Syndrome. But according to this definition I am a person's with a disability. My life altering medical condition, the way my genes were made, means I can't go through life the same way an able bodied person can and does. Ableism is one of those types of discrimination that nobody talks about. People know about racism and sexism. But not many people know what ableism is or how it affects the li...

Medical traumatic stress refers to a set of psychological and physiological responses to pain, injury, serious illness, medical procedures and invasive or frightening treatment experiences. The air smelled clean. Like the memory had attempted to be scrubbed from the walls. The smell of cleaners and disinfectants stung my nose. I remember thinking everything looked so clean. The bed was made, things were picked up off the floor, the counter had been tidied. It was so contrary to the way we’d left it, in panic and chaos, and it reminded me of returning to the scene of a crime after it was all over. The blood had been washed away, all incriminating evidence had been removed but in the eyes of the person who had witnessed the tragedy the location would never be the same again.   I could still see the blood splattered walls. To anyone else walking in that front door they would have seen a clean house but to me everything spoke of what happened that night. I walked into the...