October 2024 Shell Exchange

Welcome to the October 2024 Shell Exchange!

(Typing is going so-so. Luckily, this requires more cut-and-paste than anything)

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. “End the ‘forced swim test’ on mice for antidepressant research” by Karen S. Greenberg from STAT: First Opinion

“Is the immobile mouse a stand-in for sadness, emptiness, hopelessness, tearfulness, worthlessness, guilt, self-reproach, cognitive difficulty, or thoughts of death or suicide in the human? Anyone who has ever experienced depression knows intuitively that the answer is decidedly no.”

2. “Decades of National Suicide Prevention Policies Haven’t Slowed the Deaths” by Cheryl Platzman Weinstock from KFF Health News

“The latest strategy builds on previous ones and includes a federal action plan calling for implementation of 200 measures over the next three years, including prioritizing populations disproportionately affected by suicide, such as Black youth and Native Americans and Alaska Natives.”

3. “The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age” by Thea Lim from The Walrus

“Twenty years ago, anti-capitalist activists campaigned against ads posted in public bathroom stalls: too invasive, there needs to be a limit to capital’s reach. Now, ads by the toilet are quaint. Clocking out is obsolete when, in the deep quiet of our minds, we lack the pay grade to determine worth.”

4. “10 Steps to Becoming an Adult” by Suri Matondkar from The Audacity🦀*

“3. Remember the lessons from when you were young.

How to neatly fold yourself up, like the still-warm ironed handkerchief pinned firmly to the front of your below-the-knee frock. Prominently displayed so everyone would know you had it, but it wouldn’t be used and wouldn’t get lost.”

*The Emerging Author series has always been accessible in the past, but when I went to add the link, it came up as “Claim My Free Post.” (Except I received it in my email, and I don’t pay?) So head’s up on that.

5. “In Chronic Pain, This Teenager ‘Could Barely Do Anything.’ Insurer Wouldn’t Cover Surgery” by Lauren Sausser from KFF Health News

“The lack of a CPT code can cause reimbursement headaches, since insurers determine how much to pay based on the CPT codes providers use on claims forms.”

6. “Has Social Media Fueled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?” by Andrew Solomon from The New Yorker

“Still, research paints a complex picture of the role of technology in emotional states, and restricting teens’ social-media use could cause harms of its own. Research accrues slowly, whereas technology and its uses are evolving faster than anyone can fully keep up with. Caught between the two, will the law be able to devise an effective response to the crisis?”

7. “Electric Body” by Diana Heald from The Diagram

“The MRI my neurologist ordered revealed another kind of markings: white matter in the frontal cortex that may reflect the sequelae of migraines. I googled “sequelae”—damage, wound, residue, trauma. I did not realize the flashes of migraine left marks, ghostly traces on the MRI, until I read his notes in the MyChart app. They were not intended for me to see. Something was hurting me. The neurologist believed that something was me.”

8. “Another Reason to Hate Ticks” by Sarah Zhang from The Atlantic*

“To touch his sheep, he now needs nitrile gloves. To shovel their manure, he now needs a respirator. And Giles doesn’t even have it the worst of people he knows: A friend with the same allergy was getting so sick, he had to give up his sheep altogether.”

*Obviously, The Atlantic uses a paywall. But 12-ft Ladder DOES work on this link, so that’s why I included it in the list.

9. “A Head Is a Territory of Light” by Tan Tuck Ming from The Yale Review

“When my first migraines came, they came with a fury. For weeks, I was in and out of pain so severe that I forgot I was a person who existed beyond the blossoming sensation of my head. To vomit more efficiently, I started lying on the floor next to the toilet, and my mother would rinse a cloth in cold water, then place it like an offering on the dark table of my forehead.”