Advocacy and Abnormality – a Column by Kristin Entler

Every day for countless years now, my routine has been the same. I take a handful of meds with breakfast and dinner, the cocktail of which ebbs and flows, and digestive enzymes with all of my meals. Like most people with a lifetime of chronic illness under their belt,…

“A bat!” my mom announces to my dad and me. I look up at where she’s pointing to see, yes, a winged mammal swooping and diving and cutting back with deadly precision. I’m glad that something is eating the determined mosquitoes I’m fending off with two citronella candles and what…

It’s 2012 and I’m in my second year of community college. My hair is down to my shoulders and I carry a bottle of hand sanitizer attached to my backpack, which gets used by more people in my classes than I anticipated, but I’m happy to share. After all, fewer…

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve never met my current pulmonary care provider in person, and I keep putting off my face-to-face appointment. I moved from Alabama to Arkansas for graduate school in the summer of 2020. It was the first time I lived outside my home state. I’d…

If I’m being completely honest — and when I started this column, that was one of my initial promises and intentions — I’ve been struggling lately. But complete honesty doesn’t automatically equal complete transparency, and grief is an emotion so wholly personal and raw I still don’t feel…

A few weeks ago, I started writing about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director’s ableist comment, in which she claimed that masks are the “scarlet letter” of the pandemic. But something about burnout or writer’s block kept me from getting the words in by my…

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I don’t want to write about being chronically ill this week. Specifically, I don’t want to be chronically ill this week.  I know this isn’t revolutionary; what person grappling with cystic fibrosis and related diabetes, and all the…

At my pediatric pulmonologist’s office, an anatomical diagram of lungs in the silhouette of a child, complete with labeled cross-sections of bronchi and cilia, hung on the back of each clinic room’s door alongside ads for different brands of inhalers. Above the speckled gray tables, children’s art hung on the…

About 10 years ago, I interviewed my pulmonologist for a speech class I was taking. I asked him if he thought there’d ever be a cure for cystic fibrosis. He responded with an emphatic yes; not only did he believe there’d be a cure, he believed we’d both live to…

It doesn’t snow much here in my home state of Alabama. It’ll just get cold enough to shock the system with wildly fluctuating temperatures. It gets warm in February, and the flowers will think about blooming; in fact, my mom’s daffodils are blooming right now. But with the vernal equinox…