Marisol, a 38-year-old graphic designer in Albuquerque, started using lavender oil after her sister sent her a starter kit from a multi-level marketing company. Within weeks she was diffusing seven different blends, swallowing oregano capsules for “immune support,” and applying undiluted clove oil to a toothache that turned out to be an abscess. When she … Read more
By the second visit to the emergency room in three weeks, Priya’s husband finally said it out loud at the kitchen table in Austin. He could not keep doing this. Priya had been in weekly therapy for six months, on two psychiatric medications for four months, and she still spent most evenings curled on the … Read more
By the second visit to the emergency room in three weeks, Priya’s husband finally said it out loud at the kitchen table in Austin. He could not keep doing this. Priya had been in weekly therapy for six months, on two psychiatric medications for four months, and she still spent most evenings curled on the … Read more
Desmond, a forty-one-year-old high school history teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, lost the central vision in both eyes to a rare retinal disease over the course of fourteen months. He kept teaching. He kept walking his daughter to the bus. What he could not keep doing was the thing he had done every Sunday for two … Read more
Desmond, a forty-one-year-old high school history teacher in Cleveland, Ohio, lost the central vision in both eyes to a rare retinal disease over the course of fourteen months. He kept teaching. He kept walking his daughter to the bus. What he could not keep doing was the thing he had done every Sunday for two … Read more
Three weeks into recovery, Reggie was sitting in his sister’s kitchen in Cincinnati when the pharmacy called. His monthly Vivitrol injection was approved, but the local CVS could not stock it. The pharmacist explained that Vivitrol is a specialty medication that ships from a designated specialty pharmacy, refrigerated, with a 48-hour delivery window, and his … Read more
Helen had lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Tucson, Arizona for eleven years after her husband died. Her companion through every one of those years was a small black poodle named Otto. When Otto was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma at thirteen and declined rapidly, Helen stayed up with him for the last seventy-two hours, hand-feeding … Read more
Helen had lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Tucson, Arizona for eleven years after her husband died. Her companion through every one of those years was a small black poodle named Otto. When Otto was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma at thirteen and declined rapidly, Helen stayed up with him for the last seventy-two hours, hand-feeding … Read more
Reggie was nineteen, freshly out of foster care, and one course away from failing out of a community college outside Charlotte when his English instructor introduced him to a retired electrical engineer named Walter from a local Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate that ran a young-adult program. Walter was sixty-eight, recently widowed, and had told … Read more
Reggie was nineteen, freshly out of foster care, and one course away from failing out of a community college outside Charlotte when his English instructor introduced him to a retired electrical engineer named Walter from a local Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate that ran a young-adult program. Walter was sixty-eight, recently widowed, and had told … Read more