Phoenix is scorching in the summer, and Pat Elliott had been standing for hours. So she wasn’t alarmed one August day in 2009 to find her feet swollen. “It must be the weather,” Elliott thought. But they also ached. The pain was horrendous. So she called her doctor, and he told her to come in. […]
My husband and I have been in the same apartment for more than four years. It’s a truly lovely place — spacious (for New York) with high ceilings, stained glass, and parquet wood floors. Each room has the appropriate furniture and many of the walls have been painted a color of my own choosing. We […]
Last month I mentioned that I was training for my first marathon. Training was tough, but I was doggedly following the plan. Then, less than a week before my marathon debut, Superstorm Sandy hit New York. Floodwaters filled subway tunnels and homes, and strong winds toppled power lines and trees. Roughly 750,000 New Yorkers lost […]
In 2009 science writer Laurie McClellen’s husband, Pat, fell ill. The exhaustion came first. He grew too tired to exercise. Even the office left him fatigued. “He was so tired that he needed a two-hour nap every night after work,” McClellan wrote in her account of the ordeal. Then came other symptoms. One night Pat forgot […]
Hello world. Yesterday was election day in America. One guy won and another guy lost. But the race was hard fought, and our already divided country remains as polarized as ever. Did you listen to the last episode of This American Life? We don’t just disagree, we barely see each other as human beings. And […]
The country is in the midst of a public health crisis. Two-thirds of adults and a third of all kids in the US are overweight or obese. Although no single factor is responsible for the nation’s weight gain, soda seems to be at least partly to blame. A decades-long study published earlier this month found that […]
Here’s my ideal Sunday morning: Wake up at 10 am, drink coffee, read, hit the farmer’s market, make brunch. Here’s what I did yesterday morning: Woke up at 7am, consumed a carefully calculated quantity of carbs, ran 20 miles, and plunged myself, fully clothed, into a bathtub of ice water. That’s what a lot of […]
Last week, I left New York and headed for my home state of North Dakota. The plan was to fly to Minneapolis and then ride the rest of the way with my dad and stepmom, who were driving in from Wisconsin. Just before I headed to the airport, I sent my dad a text. I’m […]