Amanda’s Journey

by Amanda Saunders I would like to preface this post by thanking Laura for the wonderful opportunity. This is truly a dream come true! So, my health journey is a long and twisty one. But I take pride in the fact that medical professionals call me complex and complicated. I get wide-eyes and gasps of […]

June 14th, 2001

19 years ago. It was the first time I’d ever lost someone. For a moment my situation had been eclipsed by something far worse. I remember the room. I remember the lighting. I remember the colours. I remember the exact moment my mom was hearing that her father had suddenly died only an elevator ride […]

What It’s Like To Be A Quitter

When I was younger, I used to quit things a lot. There was a very good reason for it but it still made me feel like a loser. I used to quit things that were too hard. The first and probably worst thing I ever quit was my swim classes. Before I got sick, my […]

Shift Change

“It’s 7 o’clock” I said to my mom nervously. 7 o’clock. I dealt with so many scary things every day. 7 o’clock was another one of those scary things. I inhaled deeply and tried to exhale my fear of who might walk through the door. They never came in right away. Of course, I wasn’t […]

February 14th, 2020

I’m lying in bed looking up at my funky light fixture with the sun streaming through the crack in my black out curtains and I’m trying to breathe. I can’t seem to expand my torso. I can only inhale for 2 seconds and it gets cut. I have to get up, I’m going to be […]

A Poem

‘Twas the season of giving and holiday cheer and all through the town people were gathering near, to be close to their loved ones and hold onto them tight for this season was special with the snow sparkly white. Not too far in a tower a young one did lie, wrapped in tubes and in […]

Dear Jhon,

As a kid I was incredibly shy. As a baby, my mom would take me out around people and I would cry non-stop. I never spoke in school and dreaded being called upon. Even now my body temperature rises considerably when It’s my turn to talk in a meeting or a group setting. But the […]

It’s About Being Alive

18 years ago I had a heart transplant and I’ve been completely different and exactly the same ever since. Not sure what I mean? It’s the beauty of organ donation. We get to live on and be us. For how long? There is a lot of speculation and statistics around this that you may google […]

My Last Week as “Just a Receptionist”

Whenever anyone would ask me a question about myself, I would feel the need to add “just” in front of it. Someone would ask me what I do, and I would answer “I’m just a receptionist”. Someone would ask me what my program in school was “just a general arts degree”. What kind of sports […]

A little late in the Season

“It’s a little late in the season!” My dad and I had just gotten to where we store our small sailboat to set it all up when we heard this comment. In the last few years we’ve been through a lot. Family falling ill, needing major surgeries, even myself ending up in the hospital for […]