Incurable 

Faith Shearin  

The summer before fifth grade, I was sick with a kidney infection, and for almost a month, doctors could not figure out what was wrong. I ran a high fever and felt an ache in my side; I sat with my cats in my lap, in front-yard sunlight, trying to get warm. This, I think, was the beginning of my troubled relationship with doctors. I did not like the questions they asked when I appeared in their exam rooms. I was ten years old and embarrassed by my body; doctors favored revealing paper gowns, showed a relentless interest in whether or not I menstruated. It was July, and I shivered in waiting rooms and in cold, hard hallways, sat on tables where I was inspected like something unpleasant under a microscope; my mother was told I probably had the flu, and for a few days I would improve; then I worsened again, until I was admitted to a hospital, where my urine and blood suggested the problem.