26 1 0
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When asked, I spit and slobbered my formal name, blood came out of my mouth but I was not hurt and didn’t know whose blood it was. They asked me if I had family nearby.
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3011
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I feel invincible running stop signs on my bicycle, never wearing a helmet. Sometimes when I walk I think about my kneecaps and they start to feel like they’re hinging in the wrong direction and my legs seize up.
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1897146
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Sometimes she imagined the piles of Dr. Nishad's medical waste at the end of productive day at the hospital. Stacks and heaps of connective tissue, lung matter, gristle and bone, cancerous clumps of tongue and stomach and ropes of bad muscles like wrung,
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175430
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I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago — which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already b
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125100
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A group of nuns arrived in the middle of my first night at Hinsdale Hospital. I guess I must have dozed off when this odd noise, like curtains being moved, woke me up. At first I couldn't make out what that rustling sound was in the hallway outside my doo
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142030
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After surviving the first night in the hospital, I was put into a shared room to save on expenses, and to make room for the deluge of new cases that were coming in, and that was when I made friends with my roommate, Tommy. He was a boy about the sam
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141300
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Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to
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133500
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When I finally went back to school in the fourth grade, after coming down with polio, my classmates were very welcoming, though I couldn't go outside and run around like them yet at recess or lunch time. That would come, just not right away. But it was th
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158565
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My Grandma caressed
my sleeping Grandfather’s feet
as we sat in his hospital room after hours.
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120982
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Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.
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115776
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In the panic following news of my motorcycle crash, my honey fled the house without coat or wallet, and now, nearly midnight, we don’t even have cab fare home.
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65952
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It’s no surprise when Mark comes home drunk, nor is it unexpected when he grabs me roughly by the arm and slaps my face because I didn’t have dinner waiting for him. The difference is that this night tears spring to my darkened eyes and slide down my swol
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108251
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They come in my room without knocking and I'm nekkid.
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28222
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I play like I do with sister at home, pretend everything’s real, that the cross is heavy, that the walk to Golgotha is long.
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7100
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I flew to Madrid. Though, at the time, it felt like standing still. Nothing happened quickly enough the second after I had read that journal entry.
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