Articles
A selection by Nell Lake. Clicking on a title will take you to the piece.
Cognoscenti | WBUR
A FEW WEEKS AGO, my friend Robin stood halfway down my driveway, wearing her blue hospital scrubs. I perched on my front step, a good 16 feet away, clutching a box of N-95 masks I’d discovered in my basement…
New England Public Radio
THE HISTORICAL contributions of men fill most major museums and archives. Women are usually sidelined. One collector from western Massachusetts, Lisa Unger Baskin, has spent a lifetime addressing the imbalance.
The Boston Globe
SIX YEARS AGO, my neighbor Karen had a stroke. Paralyzed on her left side, Karen can’t walk, cook for herself, or use the bathroom. “I have to depend on somebody to do everything for me,” she says. Yet Karen, 61, … has managed to stay in her home — thanks to daily care from Mary, an immigrant from Ghana…
IN MAY 2003 came the joyous birth of Prairie Cummings Resch, first child of Zoe Cummings Resch ’92. All had gone according to plan: Resch lay down on a surgical table. An anesthesiologist inserted an analgesic into her spine, and she became impervious to pain below her waist.…
CommonHealth/WBUR
ONE SUNNY DAY in the spring of 2012, Kathleen Klein sat in a car by the California coastline with her 84-year-old mother, Jackie Wilton. The two women had been quietly gazing at the view, watching seagulls along the shore. “I’m ready to go,” Klein recalls her mother saying. “Not go home…Go.”
CommonHealth/WBUR
For Eileen, who is disabled and reliant on a wheelchair to get around, life in her nursing home isn’t easy. Particularly when it comes to the other residents. “There’s this guy,” she says. “He makes advances to me all the time…”
CommonHealth/WBUR
Are we over-treating the elderly with psychiatric drugs? That’s the natural question arising from a recent report that found adults over 65 are receiving psychotropic medications at twice the rate of younger adults.
Southwest (Airlines) Spirit
CommonHealth/WBUR
OVER THE YEARS, I’ve watched my cousin Deborah Haber struggle with several chronic, painful medical conditions, including fibromyalgia and a rare incurable disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disease that causes profuse sweating, a high heart rate and insomnia, among its many symptoms.
Largely housebound, and managing the life of her 11-year-old daughter, Deborah faces social isolation and persistent pain…
CommonHealth/WBUR
CommonHealth/WBUR
CONSIDER a hypothetical 70-year-old woman; she could be your mother, your sister, your wife. Call her Margaret. She’s becoming ever-more forgetful; one day she gets lost on her way home from the grocery store. A neurologist diagnoses Alzheimer’s…
Shambhala Sun magazine
AT THE ice cream stand, a bored teenaged girl awaited customers, peering out through the window at a nearly empty parking lot. Her blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was perched on a stool, chewing gum. Behind her, steel machines gleamed…
Mindful Magazine
Mary Jessup had great difficulty remembering plans, who’d called earlier, even whether she’d eaten lunch. For five years, Mary—who was living with vascular dementia—stayed in her daughter Penny’s home. Every weekday, while Penny worked, Mary sat on a worn, green couch and watched TV.