Managing Chronic Pain With Opioids; Illinois Writer Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Kate Rosenberg-Douglas has been managing her chronic back pain with prescription opioids for about a decade. Now she’s written an op-ed about her experience relying on opioids for pain while they’re being condemned for causing addiction. Plus, Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author behind the novel Heads of the Colored People. Her short story collection showcases black life in a way not often written about. 

Kate Rosenberg-Douglas has been living with debilitating chronic pain for almost half of her life. 

Earlier this month, Kate penned an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune, where she's a reporter, about her experience treating her pain with opioids. She writes about how it’s easy to condemn opioids when you’re just thinking about addiction, but harder to dismiss them when you’re living with chronic pain. 

Kate was on the line to tell us more about her story.

"I'm okay because this medicine is helping me live my life and take care of my family," Kate says. "Without it, I would absolutely be bedridden... If this is what's helping me, it's hard to understand why society seems to give the impression they have a problem with that."

— The 21st (@21stShow) July 23, 2019

Plus--

Nafissa Thompson-Spires's debut collection of short stories, Heads of the Colored People, examines the modern Black experience in vignettes both poignant and witty. It was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2018 and won the 2019 Pen Open Book Award

Nafissa was an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois, teaching creative writing. She'll move to New York to teach at Cornell University this fall.

"To be Black means to live with both the way you perceive yourself and the way the world perceives you," @TisforThompson says. "And when you add this physical part, the bodily part, not just the lived experience... I'm interested in what it means to live in a body that's broken."

— The 21st (@21stShow) July 23, 2019