Shaliza Kassam probably wouldn’t have frozen her eggs this year if her employer-based health insurance hadn’t covered it.
The Chicago-based 29-year-old knows that becoming a mother is in her plans for the future. But like many other millennials, what she doesn’t know is when or how that’s going to happen — so when Shaliza learned that LinkedIn, her employer of five years, offered generous coverage for egg freezing, she jumped at the opportunity. She was 28 years old at the time.
“I have a lot of friends in their thirties or forties, and they talk a lot about how hard…
When PURE Yoga and Equinox instructor Jimmy Burgio heard that the billionaire behind the two luxury fitness brands would be hosting a fundraiser for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, Burgio made a gut decision: He quit his job.
On August 6, the Washington Post reported that Stephen Ross, the chairman and majority owner of the real estate firm the Related Companies, was set to host a $100,000-to-$250,000-a-ticket Trump fundraiser at Ross’ Southampton home the following Friday. Among Related Companies’ subsidiary companies is Equinox Fitness, which operates Equinox, PURE Yoga, and SoulCycle. After five years of employment by Equinox and PURE…
There’s a fetid haze in the air when I call emergency medicine physician Dr. Cecilia Sorensen, who is fresh off an ER shift at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. I’m in California, some 150 miles from Paradise, where the Camp Fire has practically leveled an entire town. It’s not yet the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history, but air pollution levels are climbing across the state.
As a doctor, Sorensen knows that when wildfire particulate matter spikes, so do ICU admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular symptoms like asthma attacks. As a climate change researcher, she’s…
Name a sleep aid and I can describe the specific type of hangover it gives me. The morning after overdoing melatonin by even five milligrams, I wake up to pressure at my temples and mental fog so thick that conversation is difficult. Post-Benadryl fatigue feels as if each of my cells are begging me to get back in bed. If I take too much Ambien, it’s like I never woke up at all: I float around half-sentient, reanimating just in time for dinner.
Enter cannabidiol, or CBD, one of many chemical compounds produced by cannabis, and the latest darling of…
For over a decade, George, 33, has struggled on-and-off with erectile dysfunction (ED), a challenge that he says left him frustrated and embarrassed. “When I was nineteen, the girl I was seeing was polite about it, but it made me feel incredibly insecure and inadequate,” he says. He considered seeking out a prescription at the time, but a friend with medical expertise told him it was probably normal—that he just needed to get comfortable with the person.
Comfort alone, however, didn’t do it. Many years later, George, who spoke with Medium on the condition we not use his last name…
After eight rounds of DIY artificial insemination over nine months, including the use of a friend’s sperm and a syringe, Ash Blair’s wife was finally pregnant. The couple (only Blair agreed to be quoted for this story) had been waiting almost a year for a positive pregnancy test — a result that cost them nearly $4,000. As a same-sex female couple, they knew a baby wouldn’t come cheap. When they began exploring their options three years ago, however, they didn’t anticipate just how expensive the process of conception would be for them.
At the time, Blair, now 30, and her…
Health and sexuality writer and law student living in Berkeley, California.