I feel like an expert now. As I stumble and zombie my way through the daily, I see others for the pain they’re in. The c

Unitaskers: They seem super-cool when you see them; after a few days, they are super-useless. Unitaskers can take a lot of space in your pantry and end up being used once a year. Do you really need all of them?,When I was in graduate school, I changed my PhD topic to autoimmune disorders because I was spending so much time researching them to figure out what was wrong with me. But the more I learned about autoimmune disorders (the useless treatments, the disregard of patients, the victim-blaming), the more I wondered why I was trying so hard to get diagnosed. Autoimmune disorders are, as a category, terribly misunderstood and maligned because our understanding of the immune system is not an understanding at all. We barely understand how it works, including the inflammatory process.,Old birthday candles and party supplies: Birthday candles can easily break, and every time you buy a package, there are always too many pieces in it. See if there are a few candles still in one piece and ask your friends if they need some. Like for the children’s utensils, see if party supplies are still good and consider donating those still good and toss those which are in an insufficient quantity.,Stuff you never use: Everybody has something he’s annoyed to use or that rarely comes in handy. My parents bought a waffle machine a few years back; I wonder where it is right now! Do you have any machinery you don’t use or broken that you don’t have time to fix? Toss it!,When my wife was in medical school, we took another look at my records and discovered that I had been diagnosed, but because of the way diagnoses are created, no one had noticed. For some reason, a rheumatologist at Cleveland Clinic had tested me for a rare genetic disorder called Muckle-Wells. It’s caused by a defect on a gene responsible for the inflammatory response, the same set of genes involved in disorders like familial Mediterranean fever. I tested heterozygous, which means that I have only one bad copy of the gene, one error. At that time, a diagnosis of Muckle-Wells required a homozygous result — both copies must be defective. But the diagnostic criteria changed about a year after I left the clinic.,Indeed, the recent tweets showing off the engine are absolutely stunning and the duo is quite promising. Fred handles the 3D engine while Simon deals with the graphics and the level design. “We decided at the very beginning that we didn’t want to use the original levels. Performance-wise, we weren’t sure of the outcome, but also, it wasn’t very interesting to us. We know that we won’t do better than the real Doom, but it is our chance to show what we can do.” Fred is very enthusiastic about the upcoming release even though something will be missing due to the actual console capacities: “It’s too bad Pico-8 doesn’t provide a proper LAN [local network] multiplayer solution.”,Mismatched socks and torn clothes: How long have you been looking for that sock? If you can’t find the matching one in a month or two, you can toss the remaining one away. Torn clothes can be turned into dust rags or given to shops in exchange for a voucher for the next shopping.,The narrative, the metaphor for autoimmune disease, is that the body, for some reason, turns on or “attacks” itself. Which is a strange metaphor because every time the body fights off infection, it turns on itself. Cells of the body that have been infected are destroyed. Autoimmune disorders are really just the immune system doing its job too well. In my case, it sees infection everywhere and reacts accordingly, appropriately. Maybe we need to expand our ideas about what can “infect” us beyond viruses and bacteria. Why do we trust what our own bodies are telling us less than we trust a medical system that sees us as products, as clients who lie?,If I had been homozygous, I would probably have not survived infancy, and if I had, I would have been deaf by my teens and dead from amyloidosis in my twenties. Instead, I have the less destructive version, which means that my flares, which can be caused by cold or almost any stress, including illness, feel like I’m getting the flu. I can have fevers or just an elevated temp, extreme muscular and joint pain (if you’ve had the flu, you know what I mean), terrible headaches that aren’t migraines but are nearly as painful and debilitating, a weird rash. But doctors really don’t know much about the disorder or how it is expressed in people who are heterozygous. In fact, it’s so rare that I can’t find a physician who will treat it. I now have a diagnosis — but that diagnosis has left me even farther from treatment.,Mismatched or broken food storage containers: Match every box with its lid, check if any jar is broken or warped, and get rid of them. Food containers are great to store food in the refrigerator or bring it at work, but they can quickly turn the pantry into a mess. Clear it up and try to collect them one inside the other to save space.,An infection is a foreign body that has entered our body and reproduced itself. This is a familiar narrative, similar to possession by spirits. Now we are possessed by bacteria, viruses, fungi, and our own rogue cells (cancer, autoimmune disorders).,We talk a lot about agency, but there is no agency in medicine. And if there is, it is always the property of the physicians who insist it is the property of the hospital and insurance companies, who insist it is the property of profit. There’s no personal agency in pain.,Plastic bags: Do you keep bringing back plastic bags every time you go to the grocery? In Italy, we have only recyclable bags or big strong ones we can reuse. Move some of the bags in your car, so they will be ready for use next time you go to the supermarket or replace them with a couple of large ones made of fabric.,There is a relatively new movement in medicine, illness narratives, which is also the oldest movement in medicine. It boils down to listening to the patient’s story. Not simply as a way of gathering information and translating it into medical jargon and insurance codes, prescriptions and pills, but also as a way of allowing the patient to control their own narrative. That this narrative, generated by the patient with the doctor, is an essential part of healing. By listening to the body and telling its story (with the help of a physician who can add to that story with their expertise), we participate in what is an essential part of healing. Bodies need more than to be acted upon.,Cups and utensils for children: Your kids are grown up and don’t use children’s utensils anymore; what now? Many parents out there can’t afford to buy cups and cutlery for their babies, toss those who are too ruined, and donate the others to families in need.