July Shell Exchange
Short & Sweet to Beat the Heat
Welcome to the July 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. “Every Day My Mother Dies a Little in Front of Me” by Jeneé Skinner from Electric Lit
“She loses 75 lbs going to the gym for group fitness classes and training for a marathon, but once the shutdown happens, her support is limited. The pandemic takes away the applause, hugs, and smiles that keep her going and make her think her life’s brightening. She’s left at home with her demons, the biggest being depression. Amongst all of this, it also takes her two years to find stable housing.”
2. “The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes” by Jon Hamilton from NPR
“So scientists have spent decades trying to answer a fundamental question, Kipnis says: ‘How does a waste molecule from the middle of the brain make it all the way out to the borders of the brain" and ultimately out of the body?’”
3. “Rags to Riches” by Maddie Oatman from Mother Jones
“‘Period blood is the most overlooked opportunity in medical research,’ Qvin co-founder Dr. Sara Naseri likes to say. Collecting it is noninvasive. And data hidden in its cells might help scientists crack the code to some of the most cryptic reproductive ailments.”
4. “Outside My Fellowship With God, I Was Rotting” by Tania Pabón Acosta from Electric Lit
“My senior year of college, at 21, I found myself at the Lenox Hill Hospital ER accompanied by an NYU psychiatrist. During my scheduled appointment earlier that day, after I broke down and confessed what had been plaguing me, my doctor suggested an in-patient stay to tackle my substance use and hallucinations. Desperate, I agreed. I sat in a bare and dry exam room, black sweater pulled tight across my chest, a barrier between me and the manufactured cold. Scorpions did not crawl across the floor, gnats did not buzz around the clinical lighting. I repeated this to myself each time an imagined bug threatened to get close.”
5. “How I Found My Way After an MS Diagnosis at Twenty-Seven” by Meredith White from The Walrus
“IT TURNS OUT that being diagnosed with a chronic disease does not chart out a clear path to the future, it only highlights the risks in a way that is both useful and useless at once. I take medication to reduce the rate of demyelination, an act that lowers the risk of an attack while bringing its own set of attendant complications with it.”