The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

This afternoon, a rainy, sloshy afternoon, I went to get a chest x-ray. It is the first one I've had in probably a decade, maybe even fifteen years, not since living in Iowa City. It wasn't needed. I had a head CT scan once, about ten years ago, an x-ray before a surgery to remove my submandibular gland, of course, the mammogram, but nothing alarming. Asthma is a funny chronic disease In me, it ramps up after exposure to a trigger and goes fast. There was mold in the wall of my townhouse. The leak fixed, the walls removed, the wood treated, new walls up, new floors up, drywall painted. All good, and smelly things, that send an asthmatic into wheezy city. November ended up being that month, after fifteen years of not being in the hospital, not even an emergency room for oxygen, that I was floored. No hospital or even chronic care, took care of it with my nebulizer, chastised by my doctor for not coming in a few days sooner, prednisone my new friend, and then, something t...

It was quiet news at first. Homecoming at Mizzou. Black students in silent protest for the condition of black lives on campus and in Columbia. These students were booed and met with the usual middle Missouri brand of racism. The students kept their resolve and understood that the issues they were speaking up for included the larger social issues that have been a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. Specifically, they understood that 1, Denying graduate studnets access to health care is a breech of a promise 2. Planned Parenthood is a comprehenisve health option for many students, especially in reproductive care 3. Continued racial unrest, much hadn't changed since the 2010 cotton incident 4. Mizzou has a strained history of racialized behavior  5, The Lloyd Gaines case remains part of the story The first news tricked onto social media when the Concerned Students 1950 organized their walk-outs, sit-ins, and a hunger strike by one of the graduate students. They ...