Health Archives - The Toast

I Donated My Eggs But I Wouldn’t Do It Again

Ari Laurel Health Mar 04, 2015

My desire to donate my eggs came from my desire not to use them for myself. I didn’t want kids. Asians don’t donate as often as other women, but there are Asian couples out there who want children and can’t have them. I was a healthy, young, college-educated woman in my early 20s. Why not get compensated for helping someone else start a family?

But the application process was a process. The application itself had eugenic qualities, I noticed as I filled it out. I was supposed to note my skin color as “fair,” “medium,” “olive/light brown,” “dark brown,” “ebony,” “freckled” or “rosy.” I was asked if I would be comfortable taking an IQ test, what my philosophy on life was, what my goals were and if I had achieved them. I was asked what talents ran in my family, and whether I was ever in any gifted and talented programs. I answered each question to the best of my ability, and sent in flattering pictures of myself as well as a copy of my college transcript.

The next step was to wait for a match.

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Struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder

E. Sparling Health Feb 03, 2015

Previously in this series.

Before there was #thestruggle, there was The Struggle, or more accurately “I’m struggling.” #thestruggle was sleeping through an alarm, a bathroom with every stall taken when you had a narrow sliver of time to use it. “I’m struggling” was crying every time I heard my alarm, or in that bathroom stall typing that message, or in my car as Christmas music played through my speakers. My favorite season, my birthday, and my beloved winter holidays were sacrificed to my brain and its chemical failures.

After years of questioning whether Seasonal Affective Disorder was a real condition, I realized that it was indifferent to my skepticism. SAD doesn’t need you to believe it exists, it makes itself known. Still, I was no stranger to the psychiatrist’s office, which somehow made me even more reluctant to say “I’m depressed.” I thought of the poem “Not waving but drowning” and felt it keenly, but still wanted to choose something less dramatic than “drowning.” So I chose “struggling,” and I certainly was.

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“Snoring Through Midnight”: Nights at the Sleep Clinic

Marissa Maciel Health Feb 02, 2015

Marissa Maciel’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

After I graduated from college, a newly minted, twenty year-old psychology major, I worked at a sleep disorder clinic. The job put me in bedrooms with strangers, people who couldn’t sleep and wanted answers, and I was there to help figure out what was going on.

Mostly, these people were here because they snored. When some people snore, their breathing can also slow down (hypopnea) or they might stop breathing altogether (apnea). Sleep apnea can cause daytime drowsiness, and can cause dangerously low blood-oxygen levels. The stopping of breath wakes you up, robs you of the deeper brain waves that restore you during sleep. But I saw more than just snorers and exhausted 9-to-5’ers in the clinic.

One time a client passed out and showed me just what apnea looked like, and it freaked me out.

I had gone into her room to wake her up; she had gone through the sleep study and was looking forward to going home. She sat up too quickly, swung her feet off the bed too fast, and in the middle of a laugh about how she was glad to be done, she slumped forward and hit the wall – literally, with her head.

I followed her body as it came to rest on the floor, her unconscious weight was as heavy as anything I’d ever tried to lift in my life, and the best I could do was to guide her down. Together we went, finally her body ended up on the floor on her back, kind of breathing – kind of not. This is what apnea looks like, what she was here to be examined for. Gasping like a goldfish out of water, soft clicking noises coming from her trachea.

So there she was, a red mark on her forehead from where she made contact with the wall, laying unconscious on the floor, and I’m going through my CPR checklist while my coworker is saying “Fuck! Fuck! What do we do!” He was about ten years my senior, and this was maybe my third month on the job. I told him to call her home, try to reach her husband.

He called, and called, and called again, and her husband didn’t answer. I pictured that man in their large bed, sleeping peacefully this one night – The Snorer wasn’t there. His tired body enjoying the quiet and comfort of solitude. He wasn’t going to wake up for anything.

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“Cratered”: On Having Crohn’s Disease

Amy Feltman Health Jan 30, 2015

First, stop eating. It’s easy because the flavors hurt: the shock of cinnamon atop pumpkin spice latte, the harsh curl of cilantro in an otherwise bland bowl of Vietnamese noodles. It’s easy because it feels like control, and your body will thank you with the amelioration of cramps, of crinkling pain in your stomach, to the left and right of your stomach like the less desirable regions surrounding a bull’s eye. Your body will wake you up in the morning with cold sweat, with clamped muscles. You vomit stomach acid. You eventually relent, and at the hospital, they are cavalier about your symptoms. It is 7PM and you have eaten three animal crackers today. You will spend twenty-four hours in the E.R. “It’s lucky we were able to admit you,” Dr. Eric says. He is handsome and scruffy, green-scrubbed—a soap opera version of a doctor. “You should feel lucky that you’re not really that sick.” Eric is his real name, because honestly, truly, fuck Dr. Eric.

This is not how it starts. It starts when you are eighteen, in college, and you can’t hold down a shot of vodka. Similarly, you can’t chase the non-shot with cranberry juice. Your mother suggests heartburn, which sounds like something only fifty-year-old men have and seems to be a dig about how oversensitive you are. I’ve never met a person with so many feelings. Your roommates are concerned. Your friends are jealous. You are not gaining the freshman fifteen. You are light as a feather, stiff as a board.

At the health center, the nurses trill. A young woman! Nauseated! Check, check. They are disappointed with the state of your fresh and unproblematic uterus. You keep a food diary and narrow it down to turkey, a ciabatta, herbed mayonnaise, a sleepy sheet of romaine lettuce. It’s called a Vassar Club and comes housed with contraband carrots and potato chips, both on the vomit list. You struggle through one each day. The health center nurse stumbles across a magic word in her questions. “Are you anxious?”

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The Winter of My Discontent: On Seasonal Depression

Ani Bundel Health Jan 22, 2015

Previously in this series.

I don’t usually write about depression.

I write. I write a lot. I write a lot about pop culture. I never write about me.

I used to be on anti-depressants. I started them around the end of my first marriage. I was prescribed Prozac, the standard generic pill of the time. The problem was, I didn’t have health insurance. Yet I found a way to prove to the City of Alexandria how broke I was, and saw a shrink once a month who would refill me for another 30 days. Once I was employed and once again deemed worthy of insuring, Prozac turned to Lexapro to Zoloft to Effexor. That last one was the killer. The shrink I had just kept upping the dosage every month.

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Breastfeeding 101 for Sexual Assault Survivors

Aaminah Shakur Health Jan 20, 2015

My son was a planned surprise, which means I wanted him but didn’t think he could ever happen. What was even more unexpected were the feelings that arose around my ability to care for him. It took years for me to figure out that a lot of my struggles as a new mother were directly related to my history as a sexual assault survivor.

One of the unanticipated difficulties was breastfeeding.

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Adventures in Immigration: Winter Blues and Culture Shock

Aadita Chaudhury Health Jan 08, 2015

Previously in this series: Old Man Winter Ate My Sense of Adventure and Tips for Dealing with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I don’t remember exactly when I realized that something was indeed wrong, but it must have been sometime just after my thirteenth birthday. A few months prior, my father and I had arrived in Toronto from our small university town in India. I had little idea as to what awaited me, although I had visited Canada before and had some limited experience with harsh Himalayan winters. My parents had lived abroad and traveled widely both before and after I was born, so I expected my culture shock would be limited. I spoke English perfectly, was reasonably outgoing and academically oriented, and we all assumed that adjusting to our new urban Canadian setting would be no problem for me.

I remember the days getting shorter and shorter, and somehow limits to my freedom that didn’t exist before were put in place because of the weather. I found myself far more devoted to the local public library and the elusive worlds of YA fantasy novels than to actual social realms. I terminated my efforts at making friends in school, plagued by ethnic divisions that didn’t make sense to me.

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I Thought Penis Implant Surgery Was Just Spam Mail Until I Scrubbed Into One

Nicole Nolan Health Jan 06, 2015

At this point in my life I can say with confidence that I have seen a lot of penises. I have seen penises that are circumcised and uncircumcised. I have seen penises that are long, that are short, that are wide, that are narrow. I have seen penises with weird things growing off of them, with weird holes cut into them, that have been broken into a few different pieces, that have swollen up to three times their normal size. I have seen penises without any skin on them (protip: do not google image search “Fournier’s Gangrene”), penises turning green or black or purple, penises oozing pus. I have seen them cut open on the operating table, with insides splayed out like Prometheus on the rock.

In a similar vein, I have seen a lot of vaginas. Vaginas, being internal organs, are not as readily exhibited as penises, and require a great deal more assistance to display. No matter how good of a lover you think you are, I can guarantee you haven’t really seen a vagina until you’ve seen it in the OR. There are long labia, and short labia, and large clitorises, and small clitorises, and people with lots of hair and people with little hair, but once you pull the folds aside with a special surgical instrument called a Lone Star retractor (another thing you do not want to Google Image search), they all look mostly the same. There’s a lot of mucosal tissue, and eventually you get to a cervix. There’s not much modesty when you’re in the OR, legs in stirrups, draped in blue towels covering everything but your genitals, everything swabbed with iodine, two to three big surgical lights as bright as spotlights pointed directly at your crotch. Your face is totally covered. Your genitals are the star.

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