Long Story Short - a Column by Victoria Villar-Villar

October is objectively the best month of the year. Take my words with a grain of salt, of course, because October is also my favorite month. I love the reset, the changing of the leaves, and the pumpkin-flavored food, but above all, I love that my birthday is in October.

For me, growing up with Gaucher disease involved a dichotomy of sorts. I did all the “normal” things kids do, but at the same time, my parents and doctors would tell me to be careful and remind me that I was disabled. I never had the privilege of experiencing…

Every time I go to the doctor with an injury, I’m asked the same question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much does it hurt?” I’ve always found this interesting, because how does someone quantify pain? I have always had an extremely high pain tolerance as someone…

In January 2025, I was scrolling through Instagram, trying to distract myself from the cold and the fact that I still couldn’t walk well on my leg, when I came across an influencer who had decided on a whim to fly to Paris with her friends. My first thought wasn’t,…

I spent much of my childhood being chronically sick. I’m not talking about a sniffle here or there. I’m talking about being on the brink of death. It happened so often that my mother would joke that we were regulars at the emergency room. I had been diagnosed as a…

Most people would never notice anything different about me until they saw the Band-Aid on my hand. It leaves the door open to questions I do not, and often cannot, answer. These questions can leave me feeling exposed before I even have a chance to introduce myself. This is often…

I was told many years ago that I had an actual expiration date. Put that way, it makes me think of a banana in the grocery store eventually going bad. I know it sounds a bit dark, but that’s what comes to mind. When I was 18 months old, my…

I’ve spent most of my life trying to blend in. As a teenager, and into my early 20s, that’s all I ever really wanted to do. At 18 months old, I was diagnosed with type 3 Gaucher disease and given a life expectancy of 12 years.