Advocacy and Abnormality – a Column by Kristin Entler

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 call healthy. At my sickest, I was bedbound for weeks at a time, unable to breathe.

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 been falling out. It’s most obvious in the shower, when I’m rinsing away shampoo and conditioner…

“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 farm stand. I rub my rib cage where it’s sore, then slowly lift my arms above…

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 use to provide insulin for my cystic fibrosis-related diabetes. Omnipod sets off an alarm…

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 porch in North Carolina while he sat in his office back in Arkansas. That’s when he…

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 of shade over the road. The moonroof on my Honda, the car I still drive today,…

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 formation follows suit like a ripple effect in both directions. I’m struck by the gracefulness it…

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 the spectacular feats of human capability. Growing up, I remember going to the clinic every three…

“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 a needle, I’m at my parents’ house to get my port flushed by my regular nurse.

“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 an IV antibiotic. While she presses buttons on the machine, I reach over to the…