Kristin Entler was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 6 months old, and first came out as LGBT+ several years after her diabetes diagnosis at 12 years old. She currently serves as poetry editor for NELLE, as access coordinator for Open Mouth Literary Center, and lives with her service-dog, Azzie, whose name is short for the Greek god of medicine. Entler can be found on most social media platforms @findmycure. She hopes her column “Advocacy and Abnormality” is a space for inclusion and solidarity for anyone living in a body that is often seen or treated as different.
There’s a myth out there that “a healthy person has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has only one.” As someone with cystic fibrosis (CF), I’ve never had a body I could…
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Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with various vitamin supplements. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. My hair has…
“It’s been over a month and I don’t feel right,” I tell my mom as we’re making dinner. She’s mixing Caesar salad dressing and Parmesan cheese into the fresh lettuce I bought from the…
The other morning, I was startled awake by the sound of my insulin pump screaming for me to change a part of my infusion set. That happens regularly with my Omnipod system, which I…
This past spring, before graduating from my Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program in creative writing, I had one last meeting with my adviser. We connected via Zoom as I sat on my back…
There’s a video buried deep in my phone’s memory from seven years ago. It shows me driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the summer, the leaves full and making a canopy…
A pod of pelicans flies over my head, then out over the ocean waves, where they skim the surface of the water. One in the middle of the mass pumps its wings, and the…
The divers are synchronizing, the skateboarders are grinding, the gymnasts are flying through the air, and like so many others across the world, I’m sitting firmly in front of my TV, taking in all…
“We could go to the beach,” my mom says as the two of us sit on her screened-in porch in Alabama. It’s spring break, and because I’m picky about who can stick me with…
“When can we get out of here?” my mom asks the group of doctors on their daily rounds. I’m in a hospital bed, tape tugging at my skin as a nurse unhooks me from…
Note: This column describes the author’s own experiences with Orkambi, Trikafta, and Symdeko. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. In December…
If you’ve been keeping an eye out for a new column of mine, even noticing the gap between my last column and this one, you might’ve seen that I’ve been absent from this…
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