I've never asked an interviewee for advice on an eye patch before, but there's a first time for everything. In my defense, I'm joined by Samantha Jade Durán — an accessible fashion designer and disabled beauty influencer known as "a disabled icon" — so her opinion weighs heavily. "I don't know which one to wear.
I've been trying not to show my naked eye," I say in reference to my recent eye removal , holding up two custom patches. She points to the more (ahem) demure of the two: a white patch painted to look like porcelain. The acrylic blue cracks serve as a reminder that feeling fragile doesn't mean you're broken.
Jade Durán knows what it's like to feel like your body is broken. When she still hadn't crawled at 18 months, a doctor diagnosed her with multiple chondromatosis (a condition that causes multiple bone tumors). Her parents quickly sought a second opinion, at which point another doctor misdiagnosed her with a rare bone disease called fibrous dysplasia (a condition characterized by cartilage-based bone lesions).
Then, right before her high school graduation, Jade Durán was instead diagnosed with bone cancer and a rare genetic disorder called Maffucci syndrome, which can cause painful bone tumors, short limbs, overgrowths of cartilage, and increase the chances of developing certain cancers. In addition to Maffucci syndrome, Jade Durán also lives with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, long COVID , and a connective tissue disorder called Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos synd.