About Hunger Pains

Hunger Pains is the story of Colleen Mendoza, a mother of four, whose three-year-old son, Connor, has Prader-Willi Syndrome, an illness characterized by chronic, uncontrollable hunger. Colleen was the most perfect narrator one could find. She was articulate, honest and openhearted about the challenges and joys of raising this little boy. And she was not at all intimidated by having a microphone in her face.

I initially contacted Colleen through Twitter after seeing an ad for a Prader-Willi charity walk she was participating in. After a couple of email exchanges and a phone call, I made a visit to their home. After that visit I made three more trips to their home. I decided I wanted the story to follow the arc of a day, so my recordings needed to cover waking up to bedtime. That meant there was a lot of tape to wrangle — almost eight hours.

The piece was challenging for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I endeavored to make it non-narrated. For some, this might have been easy. But I am a writer and I know how to construct stories with quotes and my own interpretation of the narrative and distillation of the facts. Using solely sound and subject narration to drive the piece made me feel a bit out of my depth. But I think it worked.

About Lauren Ober

Lauren Ober is a longtime print reporter and blogger currently based in Burlington, VT. She’s written about a variety of topics from the decline of Vermont’s dairy industry to the history of the creemee to everything you ever wanted to know about maple syrup. Did you know someone once tried to run a car on maple syrup? You do now. Lauren recently made the leap to radio where she hopes to continue reporting the untold stories while not getting tangled up in all the gear.

You can find more of Lauren’s work on PRX.

Lauren’s blog is OberandOut.

And follow her on Twitter: @oberandout