The Collective Voice
Front Cover: Maha Zubaidi by Courtney Loi The Collective Voice Co-Facilitator Back Cover: Courtney Loi by Maha Zubaidi The Collective Voice Co-Facilitator
Vol. 10, Issue 1
“Stumbling is not falling.” -Malcolm X
Culture of silence There is a culture of silence to which I breathe. This silence suffocates me, burying my spirit under a cave of isolation and suffering. When I was molested as a child, I cried out for help. My cry, was seen as a screeching siren that threatened to rip apart the false allusion of family. My perpetrator was not a stranger. He was a lecher. He was my father. My cousin. My neighbor. My friend. The violation of my body, broke my mind apart, and I disassociated. I became... aware of an alternative universe. One in which I would spend hours, even days in, dreaming of a new world. A better world. I stumbled the moment I felt my voice break and fall into submission that what I experienced, was false. I imagined it. There was no way family can molest itself. My greatest fall. Was being misunderstood and failing to stand my ground. Speak my truth, and be confident in that truth. Living in this white devil world has taught me that Amerikkka loves to reward sinners. Liars. Exploiters. It easily forgives and forgets violent transgressions. Today I break my silence. I fell from grace, when I could not see the value in my own soul. I am not a fallen angel. I am a survivor.
Living with a Chronic Condition By Evan Илья Andersen It does not take a whole lot of education to guess that a person with a “chronic condition” has a little more on their plate. For some of us it requires a dependence on medication, sometimes after years of trial and error in finding the right one. Some of us need to assiduously monitor our routines, to make sure we are not forcing ourselves into inevitable pain, discomfort, incapacitation, or poisoned bodies. We have to work, every moment of every day, for the rest of our lives in almost all cases, just to make sure we can achieve the health and longevity of average people. That is a thing to work for, if you ask me, but to put it bluntly it can be a “do or die” kind of journey. Literally. I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D for short), a lifelong autoimmune disorder that kills the insulin producing cells in my body, on January 4, 2005 (I always remember because that’s usually the first day of winter quarter). I was 7, and although the years leading up to the diagnosis saw me developing some wellness problems, I was otherwise outstandingly average. It was a big shock then, when I had to go from that to having multiple daily injections of insulin, overnight. I still remember the first night really clearly (who wouldn’t, I guess) when I ran around the rooms until I had to be held down on the bed, crying, to get my first injection at home. So I could eat dinner. Things didn’t get more dramatic than that, though. My parents are mostly to thank, and they have put unquantifiable work into ensuring that I was both healthy and uninhibited. Taking care of T1D is a nightmare. You test blood sugar, the main metric for seeing how we are at a given moment. The number must be in a narrow healthy range, but if it is not (VERY often the case) insulin must be given or sugar eaten, depending if it is high or low respectively. This can happen several times in a day. Blood sugar needs to be tested and insulin must be given 15 minutes before any meal with carbs or sugar, and it must be measured to the exact amount of carbs we are eating. Every number must be recorded, so our doctors can help us narrow in on our specific insulin and
“Discussing Chronic Illness” By: Bethany Taylor Do you know what a chronic illness is? Have you ever heard of Lupus? Multiple Sclerosis? Chronic Fatigue Syndrome? These are just a few of a long list of chronic diseases that many students around you cope with on a daily basis. Chronic illness is defined as: "a disease that persists for a long time" and is not "cured with medication". A common issue amongst this group of illnesses is that many of the symptoms and the coping process is invisible to the public. For instance, a Type 1 Diabetic at UCSD has to constantly monitor their blood sugar levels and inject themselves with insulin throughout the day. A student with Lupus suffers with hidden chronic pain and fatigue on a daily basis. If a fellow peer has Crohn's disease they have to manage the inconvenience of an unpredictable digestive system. And yet, merely pointing out a few symptoms for each of these cases reveals only the tip of the iceberg of how heavy a burden chronic illness can be. To begin with, there’s the diagnosis process. This includes a long parade of medical tests and experimentation with medications, which hopefully pinpoints the right disease the first time around. Then there’s also the process of acclimating to one’s symptoms and figuring out how balance being a student and a chronic illness patient. It is a difficult pill to swallow to accept the fact that your body is unwell and cannot do all that is used to. Consequently, the fact that students with a chronic condition have to manage such responsibilities while coping with debilitating symptoms everyday without people realizing, creates a widespread social ignorance of the regular battles they face. This is why several UCSD students have come together to form Alliance for Students with Chronic Illnesses (ASCI); a club that promotes awareness of chronic conditions and offers the support of socializing with fellow peers going through similar experiences. The organization meets on Mondays at 3:30pm and announces its weekly meeting location on its Facebook page.
carb sensitivities. Often factors like stress and exercise impact blood sugar, and adjustments must be made. Sometimes something goes wrong at 2am, and you are left feeling sick and not sleeping until the problem is fixed. I have an insulin pump, a machine that makes my life easier but also a machine with very particular needs. It needs to be properly maintained and the infusion set changed every two and a half days. The consequences of uncontrolled high blood sugar are nausea, vomiting, excessive urination, and in extreme cases diabetic ketoacidosis, which can lead to coma and death after many hours or days. Long term effects are the ones you hear about a lot, like amputations, kidney failure, blindness, and so on. For low blood sugar, the consequences are much more instantaneous, with dizziness, sweating, impaired motor functions, loss of awareness and cognitive function, and if left untreated in the right circumstance can lead to coma and death in about an hour. People who come close to this have been found to have decreased cognitive function after the close encounter. For myself, I used to work hard to keep my condition as invisible as possible. With misconceptions about Diabetes, especially the difference between Type 1 and Type 2, I have opted to just keep it to myself. This inevitably hurt me, though, because I started to forget to take the required care that my condition demanded. I have tried to work against the discomfort of knowing that my body doesn’t function properly, and overall it has helped my health. Therein lies the crux of having a chronic condition: you have no choice but to take care of it if you want to be healthy and average, but you stand out as a person with a “sickness� when you do the required procedures. That is about as much visibility as most of us get. It can be hard to be proud of a chronic condition. You know your body is essentially broken, and you know that you need to work your ass off to live a regular life, and you do not get a break. A break can be fatal, but the hard work we do just levels our health deficit to a net zero, if we are lucky. All the same, the fact that we are still out in the world functioning as everyone else is a remarkable achievement, for all of us, especially at a competitive university. Photo credit to: Eeman Agrama
People with chronic conditions face a severe lack of advocacy, despite having so much to deal with and face in their lives. This is largely due to lack of visibility, which we work to change. Here are some facts I like to share. The cost of medicine is outrageous, with my insulin prescription for the next two months coming out to a net worth of $4,000. My life-saving medicine, that I cannot go hours without, costs more than my college tuition. It doesn’t stop there, either, with test strips for our monitoring devices being ¢80 each, and testing about ten times a day as required means $8 dollars a day. My insulin pump costs $2,000 on its own, and the supplies to maintain and use it are a few thousand each month. I am currently covered under my mother’s insurance, which she gets through her teacher’s union with the San Diego school district. For a myriad of reasons, I am worried for the future of my health care. Chronic conditions and T1D especially take a heavy toll on the mental health of the individual, with higher rates of psychiatric disorders in young adults, and an increased rate of suicide attempts. I was not exaggerating when saying that insulin is life-saving; T1D patients we be lucky to live past the age of 30 (although it was a lifetime of constant suffering) before the invention of synthetic insulin, and that was with the best treatments they could manage. If more people recognized the lifelong burdens we bear, and the incredible work we do to stay healthy, it would be easier, without a doubt. The best thing others can do to help people with chronic conditions is to recognize that they struggle hard. We often do it alone, but having support systems are essential for success. We would like to receive acknowledgement for managing to keep ourselves healthy and at the same time competitive, for bringing ourselves to live long lives despite the trying effort, and most of all for being successful. It helps us a lot, and means more than you may think.
Photo credit to: Eeman Agrama
If I would've known. "If I would've known earlier, I'd tell you how it started. How it began simply in your passion for what you do. How the aura that you carry yourself with, quickly makes everyone who sees you fall in love with you. It's in the way you form your bonds, and relationships with friends. If I would've known this would happened, I would have not let my horoscope tell me your sign and my sign were not a match. I would have filled a notebook with poems like this about you, just so you could read them. I would have looked you in the eyes and let the butterflies you make me feel take over. If I would've known this was a possibility, I would of had more confidence in myself and try to get to know you better. I would have dig in and try to find why the barriers you've put up aren't needed anymore. I would of risked my walls to somehow make this go. ...and let the feelings act just as they feel. But the reason why I didn't see this as a possibility, it's because the space we are trying to rebuilt came first. The reason why I didn't think this would happen is because the way I think of love, and your pure image of love don't match up. And the reason why I didn't know earlier was because I never grew what it takes to tell you myself how I felt." -Anonymous
Gotta stay loyal, To no more oil, No more taking from below the soil, We will makes sure things will start to boil, cause they keep on trying to slaughter, But us? We hold onto this sacred water, And if need be we will make it get hotter, Maybe we gotta become a boycotter, I promise you, from this it will all turn sunny, We just need to start fucking with they money, 'Cause what they are doing don't taste sweet like honey, And this whole thing sure as hell 'aint funny, Are we gonna keep letting 'em get their sick kicks? Or are we gonna start throwing down bricks? 'Cause I'm hella tired of all their damn tricks, And my elders keep reminding me that oil and water don't mix.
The author is a fourth year student and was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes at age 14. She is insulin-dependent and uses syringes to administer around ten injections of insulin a day on average. She checks her blood sugar around ten times a day by pricking her finger-tip with a needle. Aside from her medication (insulin) and monitoring her blood glucose throughout the day, her regiment to ensure as good of health as she can includes: going to the gym about five times a week, walking for transportation as much as she can, eating around 30-40g net carbohydrates a day, and always prioritizing sleep and stress management (such as daily prescribed relaxation periods, yoga and meditation). No Shame You know the thing you do Divert your eyes Your expectation that I'm ashamed is the real insult It's the worst thing you could do Stare or ignore I don't care It's interesting I get it That's an okay thing you could do The one thing no one says you can do You can talk to me You can ask That's what you should do Because I inject In class At work
On the bus At the store I need needles to live It’s really okay And for that I feel No Shame