No Tears for Sarcoidosis - a Column by Charlton Harris

For the past few days, I’ve been taking an inventory of my life. I guess living with a chronic illness will make you do that. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I guess I was feeling like I needed to take inventory of what…

Two of my daily tasks are staying confident and encouraged. Sometimes that’s a challenge. I joined a few sarcoidosis groups on Facebook, and I’ve read postings about folks who’ve lived with the disease from three to 40 years; I’ve been living with it for about 18 years. As I like…

I recently started reading about addiction and depression, which led me to enroll in an online certification course in addiction therapy. I have come close to dealing with both, and I want to share those experiences. When you think about it, life is all about stories, and you can’t tell…

“… but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career.” — Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), “Taken” Every time I watch the movie “Taken” and this scene comes up, I’m all in. In it, the Neeson character’s daughter…

In the first three months of the year, I’ve lost friends due to various illnesses — none of them primarily because of age — and I’ve worried about some other friends’ troubling health. All of this has made me reflect on the time I have left, given that…

I was unexpectedly hospitalized in February 2020 after several days of feeling weak and more out of breath than usual. Given my pulmonary sarcoidosis, my healthcare team decided to admit me for observation. I had spent the previous month being tested and evaluated for a lung transplant. I…

I’ve recognized that I have a huge problem. I recently had an appointment with my new cardiologist’s nurse practitioner. A few weeks prior, I’d had an echocardiogram to determine how my pulmonary sarcoidosis is affecting my cardiovascular system. The results were pretty good considering the condition of…

Navigating children, a spouse, and pets in one house is hard, especially when we’re all there at the same time. Sometimes we’re together all day. If someone told me this could happen 20 years ago, I’d have called them a liar and it a deal breaker. I couldn’t imagine that…

Sometimes when I awake in the morning, I’m afraid of what the day may bring. Then, when I retire for the evening, I’ll take my tablet with me to bed to read or listen to jazz. But just when I’m ready to call it a night, a feeling of…

It’s easy to forget what’s most important when living with a chronic health condition. I reflect on this often, especially when I’m working out at the gym or trying to do “normal” activities. Achieving a sense of normalcy with sarcoidosis is difficult, especially during a pandemic. A shifting sense…