Over here in Sydney, the eclipse didn’t occur, and a 14-hour time jump from the East Coast means I actually often receive current events updates on a delay (while lying in bed reading them on my phone at 6am). The weird FOMO/day-ahead mentality, where my daylight is your nighttime, renders me disoriented; I feel as though I’m watching the world from a distance, as a bystander to all things America. The break from that most patriotic of traditions, the 24-hour news cycle, has been healing for me: in the absence of bottom-of-the-screen news tickers, I can choose when and how I want to be informed. But who am I kidding? I have a smartphone, and Twitter (where I get most of my news now), and a bookmarked Safari page with R. Eric Thomas’ Elle articles. I’m still a slave to culture—I’m just a long-distance slave.

Luckily Entertainment Weekly (digital edition) and Rotten Tomatoes are accessible from Australia, so after I read early reviews of The Big Sick and saw that it was coming out here, I headed with a friend to see it. The next night my husband and I went to dinner with another couple and the wife was describing some health problems she’s been facing. I took in her symptoms and was struck by how they mirrored those of Emily in the movie. Feeling hopeful and more than a bit heroic, I mentioned as much to my friend, who resolved to discuss the similarities with her doctor. A few days later, she told me that there was 95% certainty she had the same disease portrayed in the film.

Read the rest over at Mockingbird!