My worst headache today wasn’t the one from Covid — ibuprofen helped with that. It arrived via text, when my mom sent a new photo of my dad’s spider bite, which had gone from steadily improving in appearance to looking worse than ever. Crankenstein, who says she feels “70% better” as of today, saw patients […]

When a friend heard that Crankenstein and I were sick, she mentioned that she and her wife have been watching Eight is Enough on Tubi. Like Family (also on Tubi), which counted Kristy ‘Buddy’ McNichol and Meredith Baxter among its cast, Enough — a dramedy about the Bradfords, a family with eight children — is

“Sorry for being a fuckface and giving you Covid,” Crankenstein said dejectedly this morning, an apology that would’ve made me laugh appreciatively if I wasn’t about to cough. I’d taken a test so I’d know whether to reschedule Tuesday’s PT appointment and wasn’t surprised when the bottom line immediately lit up like a Christmas tree

There’s something in the air here, by which I mean our home — possibly Covid. Crankenstein’s only tested herself once so far, when she first fell ill on Wednesday, and it was negative. In the days since she has hacked almost nonstop, slept a lot, and gone through a couple boxes of tissues. Though she’s

“Why did your dad send me this?” Crankenstein asked as she made her entrance yesterday morning, tilting her phone to reveal a closeup of some sort of burn, rash or other flesh wound. Normally when they text each other it’s to exchange bear memes and headlines (bears as in Ursidae, not voluptuous gay men, which

“I guess with my tennis it’s always been a bit of a struggle,” Andy Murray told Sue Barker after losing a first-round doubles match at Wimbledon this evening, an understatement that made many fans, myself included, chuckle through our tears. Unless he decides otherwise in the coming days or weeks, it’s not a wrap on

Last week I forgot about the sprinkler and left it running for a half-hour longer than necessary. I’d set a timer on my watch, and I remember pressing ‘stop’ when my phone and wrist vibrated in unison. Then I returned to whatever it was I was doing, thinking Oh, I’ll finish this first, it’ll only

The GI trip took a little over two hours today, most of it spent waiting. Once ensconced in an exam room, my first visitor was a research coordinator who asked me to fill out a questionnaire for a longitudinal study tracking the outcomes of a few thousand patients at IBD clinics across the US. When

Like Ron Burgundy, I’m in a glass case of emotion: the GI appointment I thought was set for August is actually slated for tomorrow. You know your Crohn’s is on its best behavior when the doctor lets you go six months between appointments, so I won’t complain about that. But for the last 38 years

A few years ago, after returning from an ill-fated outing recommended by her exposure therapist, I asked Crankenstein if she could honestly say she was in love with me. “You first,” she timorously deflected. What followed was one of the hardest talks we’ve ever had, and once it was over I felt slightly relieved despite