Type of Submission: Health Story

Viaje Alrededor De Mi Cabeza. Una Historia De Mi Calvicie

Alejandro Badillo talks about his baldness and how being bald is not only a medical condition but also a cultural condition. When he was 17 years old, Alejandro's hair began to disappear. The technical term for his condition is androgenic alopecia. Among the descriptions of how to be bald, Alejandro includes a lot of historical, philosophical, and cultural information on baldness. His personal story has deep connections to the experiences of other bald people.

Volver a escuchar ha sido un milagro para Gabriela

Gabriela has been working at the Ministry of the Nation in Buenos Aires in her private practice with patients with hearing loss for 20 years. She suffered from measles at the age of 2 and began to lose her hearing soon after. She goes into great detail describing the gradual loss of her abilities and independence, her career change to be a psychologist working with people with hearing loss, and her eventual decision to get a cochlear implant. She emphasizes her will and determination to overcome any goal that life puts before her. A story in question/answer form, about 2 pages, suitable for discussions of Deaf Culture or ways of coping with progressive disability.

Y Si Ya No Puedo, ¿Qué Hago?: Un Relato De Infertilidad

This story (10 minute read) describes the reality of being infertile when a woman yearns to have children. Patricia Cruz Pineda is a rare case (currently one in a million) who cannot have children naturally or using IVF. She and her husband divorced because his frustrated desire to be a father led to him start drinking heavily. She will never have children, and focuses on advice for women in her situation: focus on family, friends, and the community, and avoid events like children's parties and baby showers for a while. Most useful for a community group focused on women's health issues. Written in Peninsular dialect and very directive, which might draw mixed reactions from Latinx/Latin American readers.

Esto es lo que sientes cuando tienes depresión

Barbara Stepko details the experience of five people with depression. One of these is Nita Sweeney. As a child, Nita felt that she lived with an immense melancholy that prevented her from functioning. These feelings stayed with Nita throughout her professional years. Her grave feelings weighed on her until she made a plan to take her life. She was stopped by a call from her therapist. Because of this professional, Nita spent time in the hospital and used writing, running, and medications to stabilize herself. Useful for community groups to discuss stigma of seeking help for mental illness.

Historia de una cicatriz

Melania Mosteiro is a Spanish life coach who bases her perspective and approach in her experience of having been born with a minor deformity that makes her face appear slightly crooked. She was very ashamed of this deformity and when she was 17 years old, she underwent an operation to correct it. The operation didn't change much, but as she waited for the next operation, her point of view changed. She realized that her scars are a part of her, and she was finally satisfied with her appearance. 8 minute read; upper intermediate Spanish readers. Useful to discuss body image.

Testimonio personal sobre el Trastorno de Ansiedad Generalizada

An anonymous source discusses her experience as a young woman with anxiety. As a child, she began to have recurring thoughts of situations that had never occurred, e.g. fears of being late for class made her unable to sleep. Doctors assumed her only problem was insomnia, without probing for anxiety. Appropriate for upper intermediate classes or community groups to discuss taboo of admitting mental illness, describes various forms of anxiety and offers suggestions for alleviating symptoms.

El miedo de engordar en cuarentena

This narrative is from a woman whose struggle with bulimia worsened during the Covid lockdowns. Maria describes the impact of the isolation and forced inactivity that came from lockdown, and the physical and mental damage she has suffered from her bulimia during the quarantine. Contextualizes her personal struggle in social and cultural frameworks of beauty and control, making this useful for advanced intermediate and above students - and educated lay adults - to discuss eating disorders.

El camino hacia la audición de Mariángeles

The link takes you to a website in Spanish that gives detailed information about cochlear implants. One section labeled "Historias de Usuarios" has several stories from people who have successful experiences with the devices. One example: Mariángeles, an Argentinian woman, feels "reborn" after cochlear implant surgery and returns to study at the university. She says that now that she has her “ears” and her son is an adult, she can fully focus on herself again.

Film can help us look disability in the eye.

This editorial (2 pages plus 4 links to videos) argues that US Americans are uncomfortable with disabilities and that filmmaking can make it easier for them to do so. The author tells his story of being misunderstood and having awkward interactions many times because of his condition (medical name not given) that he calls "whale eyes:" misalignment of his eyes so people can't tell where he's looking. He started by making a film his senior year in college to show his family how the world looks to him and how he works around his condition to read, write, cook, and navigate the world. From there he started making more films with disabled people - one with face blindness, another going blind, a stutterer - so they could tell their stories in similar ways. Videos linked to the article are 8-12 minutes long and all focus on "experiencing" the disability: See what the face-blind person experiences (recognizable faces are shown upside down and sure enough, you can't identify them). Listen to the stutterer actively filtering out their fluency issues with an imaginary machine called a "Listenometer." Useful as insight into non-medically focused stories of disabilities, or as examples for a digital storytelling activity.

Unmasked: Illustrating Covid-19 in Okoboji

Emily Mendenhall wrote a book, "Unmasked: Covid, community, and the case of Okoboji" based on 87 interviews with people in her hometown of Lake Okoboji, Iowa in 2020. This graphic narrative, illustrated by another native of Lake Okoboji, condenses that scientific/cultural report into full-color panels of comic strip interspersed with description and analysis. Much more compelling for most undergrads than a chapter of the book would be, it focuses on "cultural squabbles and social complexities of the first pandemic year in ...a tourist town in northwest Iowa." Could also illustrate the work of a medical anthropologist within her own community rather than in an exotic location.