Essay in Hippocampus Magazine: "Salisbury Steak Day"

ahimsa

ahimsa

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I'm a bit late sharing this, since it was published on March 8, and I keep forgetting to post!

But I really enjoyed this essay written by @Michelle :

https://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2021/03/salisbury-steak-day-by-michelle-strausbaugh/

Hippocamus Magazine said:
They wake me up most days with a knock at the door. A blonde woman and her blonde daughter. A red-faced older gentleman. A man and woman in polyester suiting. A group of girls and their scout leader.

“Are you Michelle?” Surprised to see a woman in her early thirties in pigtails and pajamas. They hand me a warm Styrofoam clamshell. Consult a sheet of paper.

And then they are gone. Like handing meals out to prisoners in solitary.

This is so not what I thought Meals-on-Wheels would be like.
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There is no treatment that has survived the few clinical trials science has bothered to muster.
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The one day I leave my apartment for a fucking doctor’s appointment and I miss the best Meals-on-Wheels day of all. Firm, lubricious pasta bursting with real ricotta. It will be six weeks or more until it comes again. I nearly weep from despair.
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Lots of great lines and observations.

It's so perverse, isn't it - the people who most need really nourishing delicious food get 'Lemon gelatine' and varieties of brown slop with fanciful names. The food my daughter got while in hospital made me think the catering was a deliberate ploy to encourage patients to leave quickly, one way or another.
 
I feel a bit guilty as I was dithering about whether to post this here because technically the piece isn't about ME/CFS per se and I wasn't sure if I'd just look like I was shamelessly self-promoting. But @ahimsa finally did it for me. I'm glad you all enjoyed it!

Originally I didn't include anything about ME/CFS because it was meant to be a short piece (750 words or less) and it's very difficult to explain ME/CFS succinctly. But the editors wanted me to explain why I was homebound. In the back and forth between the editor and I while editing it, I realized that my typical short hand explanation that I used in the piece doesn't really work well (indeed, I think the paragraph on ME/CFS in this piece is the weakest part, not least because I was emerging from the worst crash ever when Hippocampus informed me that they wanted to publish my essay). The flu analogy works, but I realized the editor thought I was describing feeling jet lagged rather than the disordered sleep of jet lag. And the hung over analogy to describe the problems with sensory stimuli just doesn't work at all. For one thing, it's so much worse than a hang over! And yet, it's so outside the normal experience of non-PWME (or even people with mild ME/CFS) that it's difficult to find a suitable analogy.

Hutan said:
It's so perverse, isn't it - the people who most need really nourishing delicious food get 'Lemon gelatine' and varieties of brown slop with fanciful names.
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I know, right? I had such mixed feelings about Meals-on-Wheels. The food was mostly awful. And it didn't provide any of the companionship that I thought it would (alas, the editor cut a line I had about expecting it to be something like Tuesdays with Morrie -- lol). Yet, it was nice not having to think about cooking or even what to eat. And it did provide at least some human contact. Thankfully(???) I became sick enough by 2008 that I was eligible for Medicaid to pay for considerably more home care service, meaning I've had someone to cook for me since then. Which was a good thing as by 2010 my food intolerances were so bad I wouldn't have been able to eat much of what Meals-on-Wheels served. :sick:
 
Just a little but exciting follow up to this thread: Hippocampus nominated this essay for a Pushcart Prize! Outside of the literary world, the Pushcart Prize is not well known, but within the field, it's sorta a big deal. It works a bit differently than "a" prize as it's actually about being included in a highly prestigious annual anthology.

While I don't think I'll actually win as the competition is beyond fierce (hundreds of literary magazines nominate up to 6 pieces from what they've published that year, so there are a 1000+ nominations), it is, as the cliche goes, an honor to be nominated. Hippocampus has published a lot of great pieces this year and it's quite exciting that they thought my piece was among their very best.
 
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