"You're fired." On a July Sunday morning some fifteen years ago, those were the most blessed words I ever heard. We'd pulled another late night in the camp office, and were now bleary-eyed and rushing to get things organized for another busy registration period that afternoon. The to-do list was long, but the two-woman office…

It was an exceptionally lovely spring day in northern Wisconsin. The March sun was unimpeded by clouds, using its waxing power to steadily shrink the whale-sized snowbanks bordering every parking lot. I grew drowsy in the upstairs seating of the cozy coffee shop, reveling in conversation with sisters on a slow morning. From our upstairs…

I reached the end of the day at the clinic broken-hearted. Today I met Benita. She is in her 30s – like me – and has been dealing with severe abdominal pains for many months, progressing to complete loss of sensation and function of her left lower leg. The physiatrist suspects uterine cancer with metastasis…