An avid equestrian and educator, Karen has been a columnist at BioNews — the publisher of this site — since 2019. She was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in 2009 after years of searching for a diagnosis that explained her symptoms. Karen enjoys working with her students, riding and caring for her two horses (Cherry and Spotty), and connecting with others in the rare disease community through her writing.
Generally speaking, I’m not someone who gets angry. It’s just not my style. I like being productive in all aspects of my life, and I feel that anger is counterproductive. Now, I say that, but I get easily frustrated, which one could argue isn’t far off from anger. But that’s…
Things just don’t slow down for me this time of year. Break? What’s that? The school year is starting. It’s college application season for my seniors, competition season for me, and I’m teaching an additional class this year on top of my already hectic schedule. Sheesh. Sometimes I wonder how…
I wrote about it in a previous column, but seriously, how did summer go by so quickly? Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll be thrilled when fall and winter get here — I’d rather have cold weather than hot any day — but it seems as if the summer’s…
I can’t believe it’s the middle of August. Where did the summer go? On Monday, I returned to work as a college counselor for high school students, yet graduation seems as if it were yesterday. I’ve been super busy this summer, but it’s been good. …
A couple of months ago, I started to reduce my dairy intake simply because I’m not a fan of factory farming practices. I hadn’t intended to stop eating dairy altogether, but I wanted to choose produce from smaller and more humane farms. I had noticed…
I wrote last week’s column about Wunder-duck early, as my brother was getting married and I knew the occasion would be semi-chaotic. And so it was, but it was wonderfully semi-chaotic. I got to spend five…
While I love virtually all animals, I’m not the biggest fan of the Muscovy ducks that live on the farm. Well, I should clarify that: I’m pretty entertained by the ducks themselves, but I’m getting tired of cleaning and dumping the horses’ water troughs because the ducks took a…
I realize that in most of my columns I’ve talked about my injured ankle and knee, as those are the wounds I’ve been having the most trouble with following my fall off Spotty in November. Honestly, though, the joint that by far tends to cause me the most trouble…
The past two weeks have been a bit crazy. The owner of the farm where I live had ACL and meniscus reconstruction surgery, so I’ve been doing more farm chores, like I do when she’s away. As I’ve talked about in earlier…
Last week, I shared a positive update about my new horse, Cherry. A few days later, Spotty had his six-month checkup for his ligament injury. We got good news from the vet! He’s healing well enough that we can move to the next phase of his rehab,…
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