October 2023 Shell Exchange

Welcome to the October 2023 Shell Exchange!

Midway through each month, I drop a list of recommended reads. I try to feature winning hermit crab essays (🦀) when possible. But those charming crabbies aren’t always easy to find. So I also make it a point to share pieces on invisible illness.

If you come across an essay or article I haven’t mentioned that you feel warrants attention, drop the link in the comments, and I’ll add it to the rotation next month.

1. “It Took Six Years for Me to Say Two Words” by Judith Hannah Weiss from Oldster

“When the brain breaks, the legs don’t know what to do. Neither do the hands or arms. You can’t see the curb. You can’t feel your feet. You don’t own your mind, your body, your life. I woke up with my head in a helmet studded with electrodes. Probes punctured my scalp to survey my mind. Temporal lobe, occipital lobe, you name it; there was a probe for the lobe.”

2. “The Politics of Chronic Illness Memoirs” by Kate Roberts from LitHub

“Recently, packing up boxes as I prepare to move my life—this body—across the country, it became apparent that my bookshelf contains a not-so-small section of chronic illness memoirs. Almost none purchased by me. All are by cis-, well-educated, white women—a group I also mostly belong to. I pick up each book one by one to assess its worthiness of taking up space in the moving van. I have read every last one.”

3. “NIH designates people with disabilities as a population with health disparities” from National Institutes of Health

“‘Access to quality health care is a basic human right. It is unacceptable that in 2023, every person in the United States of America does not have that access,’ said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. ‘Research to understand the barriers and unmet needs faced by people with disabilities, and to develop effective interventions to address them, is needed. This designation will help to improve access to healthcare and health outcomes for all people.’”

4. “The Mystery Around Covid Fatigue” by Dani Blum from The New York Times

“Another theory, specifically related to long Covid, is that the virus may linger in the body even after someone tests negative, Dr. Al-Aly said. After an infection clears, the body should flip an ‘off switch,’ he said, signaling that it no longer needs to fight off the virus. But in people with long Covid, he said, the body stays in defense mode, continuing to conserve energy.”

5. “Superbabies Don’t Cry” by Heather Kirn Lanier from Vela

“My stepfather nodded. He was a chiropractor, and my mother worked as his assistant. Decades before Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret was published and purchased by 19 million people, my parents subscribed to the philosophy that thoughts make things. Whatever you want, you can get by thinking positively. If you aren’t getting what you want, you aren’t being a good enough steward of your mind.”

6. “Consumer watchdog sues diagnostic firm EpiGenetics, alleging misleading claims about fibromyalgia test” by Eric Boodman from STAT

“The Center charges that these tests are not nearly as accurate as their maker claims they are, and that they aren’t good at distinguishing between fibromyalgia and other diseases with similar symptoms such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. The nonprofit also argues that EpicGenetics, “having failed to create a test that accurately diagnoses” fibromyalgia, has made up a disease to create a raison d’être for the 100Sure Test.”

7. “I try to be a body-positive doctor. It’s getting harder in the age of Ozempic” by Mara Gordon from NPR

“As a chubby teen, I remember a visceral unease before each appointment at the pediatrician's office, the fear I felt stepping on the scale. I remember the doctor who chided my mom for buying 2% milk, not skim.”

8. “For Better and For Worse #2: Re(re)thinking ‘In Sickness and In Health’” by Jean Schiffman from Oldster

“Several years into my mother’s Alzheimer’s, Dad propped that wedding portrait on the mantelpiece, alongside a copy of their marriage certificate. These were handy props for when Mom was being obstinate, insisting they were not married, or were living in sin, or that he was her father, or somebody else’s husband, or she was somebody else’s wife or too young to be married. Sometimes she didn’t know who he was at all. Dad thought documents might set her mind straight. They did not, of course. She scoffed at them. They were meaningless, phony artifacts to her, or simply references to other people.”

9. “Teen Depression Rose Sharply During the Pandemic, but Treatment Didn’t Follow” by Matt Richtel from The New York Times

“Though mixed-race and Latino adolescents had the highest rates of major depressive disorder, they had the lowest rates of treatment, the study found. Twenty-one percent of mixed-race adolescents and 29 percent of Latino adolescents with the condition received treatment for it, compared with nearly half of white adolescents. Treatment rates for Asian and Black adolescents fell in between.”

10. “‘What I’m most proud of’: Nick Jonas talks about managing diabetes, his career, and building community” by Nicholas St. Fleur from STAT

“It’s affirming when I meet somebody who says “I was diagnosed or I found out I had diabetes because I saw an interview with you and then I went to the doctor with the same symptoms.” It’s the times in which sharing my story directly relates to someone else’s journey with diabetes. Oftentimes it’s parents, who share with me that their child when they were first diagnosed, felt so alone, and then they showed their child that I’m dealing with it.”

11. “‘We’re In a New World’: American Teenagers on Mental Health and How to Cope” by Robin Hammond and Jamie Ducharme from Time

“In 2020, 16% of U.S. kids ages 12 to 17 had anxiety, depression, or both, a roughly 33% increase since 2016, according to an analysis by health-policy research group KFF. The following year, 42% of U.S. high school students said they felt persistently sad or hopeless, 29% reported experiencing poor mental health, 22% had seriously considered suicide, and 10% had attempted suicide, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”