S Nicole Lane

Itching, soreness, burning, unusual discharge—these are all common, uncomfy signs that something’s up with your vagina. But even when you know something is off, sometimes it’s still hard to pinpoint exactly WTF is going on down there. Is it a yeast infection? Or bacterial vaginosis? And whatever it is, why is it happening, and how can you make it stop ASAP?
We may have all experienced one—or both—of these conditions at some point in our lives. But don’t worry—it’s normal to have a pH imbalanc...

“Be kind to yourself. MS can be frightening and overwhelming. Know you’re not alone and there’s a beautiful community of MSers online ready to help.”
After three years of debilitating symptoms like depression, cognitive impairment, and vision loss, Anna,* 24, was finally diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
Like Anna, approximately 2.3 million people are living with MS worldwide and 1 million of those people live in the U.S. The chronic disease is unpredictable, attacking the nervous syste...

The main treatment for a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is antiretroviral therapy (ART), which stops the virus from multiplying in the body. It reduces the amount of HIV in the blood, which can help the infected individual stay healthy and avoid passing the virus on to others. People on ART usually take a combination of medications.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved 222 antiretroviral (ARV) medications to treat...

I read Theorem in the bathtub. My feet were propped up as I made sure I didn't get the bottom of the pages wet (a bad habit I have). The book opens with an image of a red cube and an off-white cylinder. "At 13, I fell in love with the tidy solution of geometry," reads the text. Theorem is not what you may expect from a book of poems. The long text is a push-pull relationship between writer and artist. The reader is immediately thrown into the conversation between two artists, separated by dis...

My God, I love a fleshy piece of artwork. When artists make works that are burgeoning and mysterious, I'm immediately drawn to them like white on rice. So, I'll go ahead and say I'm a little biased when it comes to Susan Smith Trees's work.
The Chicago-based artist has been making work for 35 years. Her show "Roots" opened this month at the Evanston Art Center's (EAC) second floor atrium gallery. In the gallery, Trees's expandable foam wall reliefs hang delicately and pronounced. They appear ...

There is still no cure for HIV after decades' worth of research. However, we now have treatments to help people who have been infected minimize the impact the virus has on their lives, as well as preventive medications that lowers the risk of HIV transmission. There are 48 U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drugs to treat HIV today.
Your doctor will decide which drug you should take depend on your viral load, T cell count, what strain of HIV you have, how severe your infection i...

It takes time after the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) enters your body before a test can detect it, and this period of time is known as the HIV window period. If you take a test during your window period, the HIV test may show up as negative even if you have been infected with HIV.1 You can still pass the virus on to someone else during this time. It's therefore important to know how long this window is to ensure that you get accurate test results and take precautions to protect yourself...

courtesy we series
The pandemic has encouraged folks to be experimental in all forms of life. It doesn’t always have to be something monumental—some people are just trying a new spice in the kitchen. Nevertheless, that experimental flair that 2020 introduced is coming to fruition in 2021. There’s a freedom of letting go of our typical routines, especially right now when everything is so unpredictable.
It makes sense, then, that the performance event We Series is getting experimental with Chic...

Childhood schizophrenia is an uncommon but severe mental disorder where children have unusual behavior and distorted perceptions of reality. It is characterized by onset prior to age 13, and affects one in 40,000 children.1 Schizophrenia is not often found in children younger than age 12.2 Symptoms often begin in the middle to late teen years. This condition is hard to spot in its early stages.
The concerns with schizophrenia range from behavioral to emotional effects, and may include halluci...

Gender blindness is an ideology where a person chooses not to see differences between genders. Gender blindness can be harmful. It can further gender inequalities because it ignores historical differences between people of different genders.
The reality is people are treated differently in public, relationships, health care, and throughout their daily lives because of their gender. These are factors we cannot ignore as we try to treat all individuals with respect on the road to gender equalit...

Nora Chin thinks about rugs all of the time. "I fall asleep at night thinking about rugs [that] I want to make and new things I want to try," she says. The lifelong Chicagoan was raised by artists. Spending her childhood figure skating and some of her early 20s skating professionally for Disney On Ice, she's dipped her hands in various mediums after attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Working in photography, drawing, painting, and ceramics, she says that "...

Feminization is the process through which a transfeminine person makes their face and body more feminine through hormone therapy and gender affirming surgery. A transgender woman (someone who was assigned male and is a woman) may seek out feminization because she wants her appearance to affirm her gender. The therapy and procedures she undergoes will focus on removing masculine characteristics (such as Adam's apple) and inducing or adding feminine characteristics (such as breast augmentation)...

Sexual relationship disorder is when a person has trouble forming and maintaining a romantic relationship due to their gender identity (the gender a person identifies with) or sexual orientation (the gender that a person is attracted to).1 This condition can affect people of all genders and sexual orientations.
If someone feels that their gender or sexual orientation is affecting their romantic interests due to denial, confusion, or embarrassment, this may affect their relationships and resul...

Heteronormativity, predicated on the gender binary, is the belief that being heterosexual (which is attraction only to a different gender) is the only normal and natural sexual orientation. Since it is based on the conception that there are only two genders, heteronormativity does not accurately reflect the reality that gender exists on a spectrum and that attraction to only similar genders or to all genders exists and are normal.
Having heteronormative assumptions may lead people to misgende...