Well, it’s been a really, really long time since I posted. I blame this on my tendency to be a poor communicator (good thing I’m in the department of communication for grad school!).

Anyway, I don’t know if anyone even bothers to read this anymore, but I do know that this is a fantastic personal reference to help me remember things that might have otherwise been completely forgotten due to both my tissues and my memory being burned by chemical cocktails.

I have been doing work at USF on illness: I have talked about the social construction of illness, performance theory and illness, illness narrative as a means of patient empowerment with medical care providers as well as personal empowerment with their illness, and I am currently working on a piece about how illness narrative might help change the landscape of private health insurance. Eventually I hope to take all of these bits and pieces and turn them into one, cohesive work.

In my various academic ventures, it has been very helpful to be able to reference back now and again and remember how the sensation of touch was so noticeably altered after my first chemo treatment (whilst making salsa), and how bad my skin hurt for unknown reasons, and how bad my bones hurt after shots, and how difficult it was to engage in normal social behavior (chemo brain), and how having super short spiky hair made me feel stigmatized in public.

Thus, I shall make an effort to continue writing, if for no other reason than to maintain the memory of why I became so interested in health communication in the first place.