After experiencing the deaths of several loved ones, I've discovered there are ways to help me process my grief

A convenience for patients is becoming a revenue generator for the health care industry. What you should know about patient portal fees You know those patient portals where you can check your test results, make your next appointment or ask your…

My immigrant Latino parents never spoke to me about money. Their emphasis was always on education. I had to go to college, end of discussion. But when I got to college, I knew nothing about savings accounts or high-interest-rate credit cards or how…

What if I told you that you could be a runner in the body you're in right now, without losing weight or having to time-travel back to a younger you? I know what you're thinking: how could I run when I can't get up off the couch? The Slow AF Run Club,…

Narrative Medicine Lecturer Olga Lucia Torres was a New York City criminal defense attorney while managing multiple chronic illnesses when she discovered Columbia’s Narrative Medicine program. Right then, she decided to make a career change and…

Narrative Medicine Lecturer Olga Lucia Torres was a successful criminal defense attorney in New York City managing multiple chronic illnesses including arthritis, lupus, and scleroderma, as well as a childhood pituitary adenoma. But after surviving a…

Lessons from the first time my daughter was racially profiled.

Olga Lucia Torres has been sick her entire life: starting with a pediatric pituitary adenoma, later developing lupus and five other autoimmune diseases, then suffering a devastating brain injury that left her disabled. As a first-generation Latina,…

When people ask me about mi familia, many emotions pop up, but the images that come to mind are always full of colors and jewelry from Colombia. We were very cultural regarding food, music, and attire. I started looking enviously at my mami and…

In the hit TV show Jane the Virgin, the American adaptation of a telenovela, Jane is expected to remain celibate until she finds her perfect man and marries. I received similar directives growing up, except my chastity wasn't as important to my…

After I suggested my 10-year-old daughter switch doctors, my daughter caught me off guard by voicing her own preference. Who gets to choose the doctor for kids over a certain age and what is a parent's role in this process? "Tell me what's happening,…

We teamed up with Gap to share how we're paving the way for women everywhere this International Women's Day. "Education is the only way out of poverty" was the mantra my Latinx family instilled in me as a young child. My abuela had no formal…

It was a late summer day when I made the not-so-brilliant decision to eat the last piece of Jamaican jerk chicken from a food cart for lunch. It looked and even tasted delicious, but not surprisingly, I got food poisoning. Bad food poising.…

I felt my heart stop when I saw the news alert come across my phone: Donald Trump says he’s been taking hydroxychloroquine, supposedly to prevent himself from coming down with serious COVID-19 symptoms in the event he’s exposed to the coronavirus.…

We now have to deal with a shortage of hydroxychloroquine, the drug that has been keeping me alive for more than two decades. On March 19, I woke up, made coffee, took my usual 10 pills and turned on CNN, hoping to see Gov. Andrew Cuomo. I got…

Growing up, I looked up to mami's closest friends. They were full of interesting stories about escapades from their respective native countries. All of them somehow managed to work, take care of their families, and send something back to family…

As a first-generation Latina, I'm used to having to translate for my Spanish-speaking family members when I accompany them to their doctors' appointments. In fact, I was the one who most often took my Abuela to the doctor. Despite writing down all of…

When you're born to parents from different countries (or in my case, one country and one US territory), who are you? My Puerto Rican father was proud of his heritage, and my Colombian mother spoke of the beautiful country she left behind to migrate…

When I read about the recent appellate ruling in the case of a drunken 16-year-old boy who had forced himself onto an intoxicated 16-year-old girl in a basement in New Jersey, it brought me back to my years as a public defender. I was one of the…

Advocates for the disabled feel vindicated after a state Supreme Court justice recently allowed a class-action lawsuit to proceed against the MTA over inaccessible subway stations. As a disabled subway rider, I, too, feel abandoned by the MTA. There…