“The appointment was set for early morning so I could make it to my fourth grade classroom before the school bell. I took this as a good sign. No doctor would deliver heartbreaking news and then expect me to go teach a roomful of nine and ten-year olds. Whatever Dr. W had to tell me couldn’t be that bad.  
“That’s what I kept telling myself, because that’s what I needed to believe.”

The words above are taken from my personal essay, “The Big Reveal,” which I’m pleased to share has been published in COPE Magazine, Issue 4. The theme for Issue 4 is Diagnosis. 

In its current form, “The Big Reveal” is the first essay in my memoir — I can’t believe I get to write this, but here it goes — which will be published in Spring 2028!!

The morning I received my diagnosis is one of those days that got filed into my memory, and not until many years later, was I more fully able to process what it meant then, and what it means now, to be diagnosed with an incurable chronic condition. 

I hope you’ll read my essay, and also take time to read the other published pieces and marvel at the artwork that together make up COPE Magazine, Issue 4. (You can access the issue online and/or order print copies.)