September Shell Exchange
A Mixed Bag for the Back-to-School Season
Welcome to the September 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. “Severalls” by Tom Lee from Granta
“Severalls was no exception to this development. Beginning in the 1930s, sleep therapy or ‘prolonged narcosis’ was used at the hospital to treat psychosis and neurosis. Injections of barbiturates or opiates kept patients asleep for up to a month, an extreme version of the rest cure that was said to leave sufferers rejuvenated and symptom-free upon waking.”
2. “The Grief and Relief of Having a Hysterectomy in My 30s After Our Surrogate Had a Stillbirth” by Kristina Kasparian, PhD from Human Parts
“My gyne surgeon is soon joined by the colorectal surgeon, the urologist, and the anesthesiologist. We talk about removing parts of the colon, reconstructing part of the bladder, and inspecting the liver and lungs. Endometriosis is an untamed circus beast that keeps several ringmasters on their toes. It has no cage and knows not satiety.”
3. “Traveling to Die: The Latest Form of Medical Tourism” by Debby Waldman from KFF Health News
“Despite the limited options and the challenges — such as finding doctors in a new state, figuring out where to die, and traveling when too sick to walk to the next room, let alone climb into a car — dozens have made the trek to the two states that have opened their doors to terminally ill nonresidents seeking aid in dying.”
4. “On Thyroid Disorders & COVID” by Rebecca Upton from Disability, Chronic Illness, & Culture
“There is also evidence that COVID infections can cause thyrotoxicosis, or severely overactive thyroid. This risk likely exists for everyone, but because Hashimoto's Disease already heightens my risk for it, I am especially worried that a COVID infection could impact my own thyroid this way. Thyrotoxicosis can cause tremors and shaking, heart palpitations, hair loss, bulging eyes, sweating, a swollen thyroid gland, and fertility issues, among other symptoms. In severe cases, someone may need a thyroidectomy. Thyrotoxicosis can also lead to a life-threatening condition called Thyroid Storm. Symptoms of this include fever, jaundice, sweating, respiratory issues, stomach pain, alterations in behavior, seizures, and coma.”
5. “Blindsided” by Jeanne Malmgren from Streetlight
“That announcement usually inspires a quizzical look, but the embarrassment is fleeting. The check-in clerk scribbles something on the paper they hand me, and I end up with a license that has an extra restriction on it. Call it the Monocular Special. I am required to have outside mirrors on any vehicle I drive, to augment my less-than-stellar peripheral vision. (I’ve never in my life driven a vehicle that didn’t have outside mirrors, but I guess that’s beside the point.)”
6. “The Lighthouse Keepers” by Jen Colclough from Craft
“The week prior to my counselling appointment, I had begun taking the lorazepam prescribed by my doctor to help with panic attacks. My body was becoming thinner and more tense. It shook as I took out the tiny white pill and afterwards, the tightly clutched blankets of my eyelids smoothed into soft sheets beneath which I was able to find sleep.”
7. “On Believing” by Rachel Dlugatch from The Audacity
“‘Well,’ the abnormally attentive ER doctor tells me, in his serious but compassionate doctor voice. ‘It’s either Something, or it’s Nothing.’ In the worst scenario, I may have a tumor pressing on my optic nerve and require immediate surgery. But he reassures me he’s on top of it, and I’m rolled down the hall on the gurney for some CT scans.”
8. “‘I Don’t Want to Die’: Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network” by Max Blau from ProPublica
“Of course, it was unreasonable to expect every therapist in Ambetter’s network to be able to accept him, especially in a state with an alarming shortage of them. But he couldn’t even find a primary care doctor who could see him within six weeks and refill his dwindling supply of antidepressants and antianxiety meds.”
9. “My Harmony With the Heron” by Jarod K. Anderson from Atmos
“I entered a period in which the world had stopped being a source of wonder. The world was something to fend off. Nature was a ghost in the attic, a memory of childhood. It wouldn’t pay my bills or quiet my persistent urge to end my life. A heron was a half-remembered song from a dead age, a soiled stuffed animal wedged in a storm drain. In those grim years, a wading bird didn’t merit interpretation.”
10. “Quitting Xanax: One Writer’s Story” by Martha McPhee from Vogue
“I never took a lot of Xanax. The dose was so small that doctors rarely saw anything amiss. My dependence happened slowly: At some point early on, I discovered that taking the drug could help me sleep—help me fall asleep, help me go back to sleep when I awoke in the middle of the night. I kept the canister of tablets on my bedside table, like a totem to ward away the sleep demons. Sleep had troubled me since I was a teenager, when my mother would give me pills of calcium in the middle of the night.”