Field Notes: February 2025
Medical toys for stuffies, how to help your doctor take you more seriously, a long Covid love story, and more
Hello, dear friends,
It’s been a rough 2025. I wish I could add a hug in this compilation.
How are you coping?
Between absorbing the news and managing daily life, I’m trying to move my body and find joyful moments. This week, that looked like reading poems and listening to Kittie Eilish on the drive to school, which replaces lyrics by Billie Eilish with AI lyrics by cats: Meow. Meow. Meeeeeoooow. It’s ridiculous and funny and … also kind of soothing?
In this month’s Field Notes, below, you’ll find a few interesting things I ran across this month related to health — including art inspired by illness, a long Covid love story, a practical flight tip, and advice to teen parents to “Be a potted plant.”
I hope you have sweet spots in your day ahead.
To our journeys,
Brianne
p.s. Just in case you need a silly laugh this morning:
Art by Vanessa Vanek
I stumbled upon Vanessa Vanek’s art on Instagram (@vvankova72) and was so intrigued. She’s a fiber and digital artist as well as an art teacher. Some of her pieces express her experience with Spina Bifida in fascinating ways.
Here’s what she writes about this piece:
“Floating Through It,” 25 in by 36 in. This piece explores my journey through a sensation I would have as a child before surgery. It was a disorienting feeling as if my bed was turning vertical and an overwhelming experience I would float away. This sensation would occur before major surgery. Still experience when I have to go through a procedure.
On the sides of the piece, I obscured parts of the rib cage, creating triangular shapes that could almost resemble palm leaves. This speaks to me trying to make sense of what I was going through, trying to cope with the disconnection I've often felt.
View more of Vanessa’s art on her website.
When ‘Cancer’ Gets in the Way of Treatment
The word “cancer” has a frightening ring to it, but it’s not the death sentence it once was. Experts are now able to detect abnormal cells so much sooner, cells that may or may not turn actually turn into a problematic issue — so should certain conditions even be called “cancer”? A fascinating issue with real-life implications.
Read the full story. (NYT gift link)
Takeaway: Always wear your seatbelt while flying
Before I went on a random reading spree about turbulence on flights (this and this and this), I thought bumpiness in the sky was pretty normal, limited to storms, sometimes scary, but overall harmless. (Clearly, I haven’t been through extreme turbulence.)
It turns out that extreme turbulence is rare, but when it does happen, a plane can plummet so fast that passengers who aren’t buckled in can actually be raised up from their seats and hit the ceiling. And extreme turbulence is rising because of the increase in carbon dioxide, experts say. It’s unpredictable and can happen without a storm. My main takeaway: Even when the seatbelt light goes off, keep your seatbelt on.
Here’s one sample comment:
“I'm a pilot. I ALWAYS have my seat belt on in flight. I experienced clear air wind shear once flying at about 4500 feet — a beautiful clear day without a cloud in the sky — and it darn near knocked me out. My seatbelt kept the impact from being more serious. Always, always, always keep your seatbelt on when in flight.”
Read Fasten Your Seatbelts: What You Need to Know About Turbulence (NYT gift link)
Recovery tools: The Way Out book, Curable App, and On the Mend community
continues her terrific series on Recovery tools with these three resources — all things she’s tried herself and recommends:The Way Out book by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv, which “teaches us that pain, while felt in various parts of the body, is actually a signal controlled by the brain”
Curable app, a companion to the book with four options: education, writing, brain retraining, or meditation
On the Mend community, a supportive and positive place for people recovering from long Covid and ME/CFS
Read the full post, with also includes Amy’s not-to-be-missed roundup of links.
Advice to teen parents: “Be a Potted Plant”
I ran across this Substack note by
, which I am tucking away for the teen years ahead. When you have teens, “Be there. Be supportive. Be available.” In other words, “Be a Potted Plant.”… I am here, I am a potted plant. I am available, I give oxygen (and hugs) when she wants them, I take big breaths when she is irritable because I know it’s not about me.
I’m like that tall plant in the corner that brightens the room but most of the time you don’t notice me. And I am grateful.
Read Dr. Sethi’s newsletter:
“Measles, Pharma, and Mistrust: A Conversation with MAHA Moms and Dr. Paul Offit”
I’m still thinking about this episode of the “Why Should I Trust You?” podcast, which examines measles — one of the world’s most contagious viruses — through the lens of a pediatrician who is a vaccine expert and two MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) moms. After the vaccine was introduced, measles disappeared from America in 2000. Before than, most people got measles in their childhood and recovered just fine, but 400-500 children died of measles every year. I never saw the Brady Bunch episode where the kids get measles and have a great week missing school and playing monopoly, but apparently it still is a force in shaping people’s understanding about the virus.
Listen here or anywhere you find podcasts.
What to Do If Your Doctor Doesn’t Take Your Symptoms Seriously
Therapist Steph Fowler, who specializes in patients who have complex illnesses, shares these practical tips and more when a physician is dismissing your worries:
“If you believe you need additional testing, and it’s not happening, tell your clinician you’d like their refusal to order more tests marked in your chart.” (“It’s a paper trail,” Steph says. “It also causes doctors to slow down and consider that this is documented.”)
Ask your doctor: “If you had a loved one with these symptoms, what would your next steps be?”
Read the full article. (Time magazine; hat tip to
, who shared this in her link list.)I Love You. Please Find Someone Else.
Oof, this story.
Philip Hoover writes about his experience of long Covid:
I had heard of the life-altering fatigue of long Covid, which turned doing the dishes into a marathon requiring several breaks and a nap. I didn’t know, however, that the illness would trigger in me a painful allergic reaction to sunshine, or trigeminal neuralgia (imagine wearing an electric fishnet as a mask), or the dozen other bizarre symptoms that left me feeling as if an essential screw holding me together had come loose.
I became housebound overnight. I was 37.
Loving your partner “in sickness” sounds noble, romantic even. In reality, it’s gut wrenching.
(The essay is not as depressing as the headline indicates; it left me with a feeling of warm hope generated by the humans who love the humans who happen to be sick. Which is all of us, at some point.)
Read the full Modern Love essay. (NYT gift link)
We closed the hole in the ozone (and we didn’t have to stop buying hairspray)
Remember the hole in the ozone layer? I remember the alarm and the worries about it in my childhood — but, hey, what happened to that health and environmental issue?
Turns out, it actually got fixed! What?!
By a coalition of governments! Through policy change!
recaps:We were depleting the ozone layer with chemicals called ozone depleting substances (ODS) (with a name like that…). Those were a bunch of chemicals used in refrigeration, air conditioning, aerosol propellants, and fire extinguishers. After a decade of scientific study on this effect, 20 countries came together to agree on regulation for these substances, and in 1987, they reached a binding agreement called the Montreal Protocol. They also created an international fund to help developing countries comply with the new regulations.
Since then, 197 countries and the European Union have joined the agreement. And scientists have seen the ozone layer recovering.
Let me repeat that for the Gen Xers and millennials in the back: That big ozone crisis we heard about our whole lives? We’ve reversed it! Scientists expect the ozone to return to normal levels within our lifetime.
This story gives me hope, as it did Dana:
The more I learn about every issue, the more I know there are clear policy solutions. We don’t have to count on convincing millions of people to change their behaviors, and we don’t have to live with constant stress and shame about our own.
So many of our world woes are system-level problems. They need system-level solutions.
Medical toys for kids
I love this so much. The Butterfly Pig company makes doll-sized versions of medical devices to help support kids with illnesses. Imagine a stuffie with an IV and pole …
Or a doll with a scar …
The Butterfly Pig offers an incredible array of stuffie-level devices, including a toy feeding pump, a toy EEG, toy cochlear implant, toy inhaler, toy allergy pen, and a toy foot brace. Doctors can use the toys to demonstrate to a child a procedure before they go through it or explain a device.
The company says the toys increase patient cooperation 150%, decrease anxiety 40%, and increase understanding 112%. I love that the toys can help kids feel more normal and calmer about their illnesses. Whew!
To see more of the medical education toys, visit The Butterfly Pig website or Instagram.
Thanks for these links Kara,
I’m all for a wider discussion about cancer. A loved one in my life has just had a biopsy and I realised I was anxious because most times I’ve learned someone had a biopsy it led to a fatal outcome. Yet many people in my life have had a biopsy or other ‘maybe cancer’ scare. Problem is, people are socially conditioned to keep these to themselves because we ‘don’t want people to worry’. So the only investigations we hear talked about are the ones with grim outcomes. As more and better tests become available, this means more fear and worry in silence than if we just mention it in passing. I mean, its not a shameful secret. I hope cancer screening will become more like a dental screening - you know if might lead to a painful but successful procedure, even an extraction (which nobody enjoys) but mostly you get a clean bill of health. And its socially acceptable to say, “Oh I’m a bit nervous because I’m having a checkup and I dread they might find something.” Most people will give you some compassion without freaking out about it.