Columns

I was recently admitted to the hospital twice in one week. Apparently, I had started to develop subcutaneous emphysema, which occurs when air gets trapped under the skin. This can cause crepitus, a crackling sound produced by pushing on the air-filled tissue. In my case, it’s a result of…

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other word would smell as sweet.” — Juliet in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” We’ve all heard those words before. Even those who slept through English lit class are familiar with one of the most famous lines from…

April 15, 1994: On that day, my life was changed with the passing of my mother. Joyce Ann Monroe Harris was just 50 years old when she died, a bit younger than I am today. That was 29 years ago! It seems like a lifetime. I can’t even begin to…

“Sarc-a-what?” That’s usually the response we get when we tell someone we have sarcoidosis. “What’s that?” they ask, and then tune out the long explanation we begin to give. “Oh, good,” they add, “at least it’s not cancer.” And that’s precisely why we need Sarcoidosis Awareness Month. Throughout…

Motivation comes at the strangest times. For the past few weeks, something has been bugging me. At first, I thought I was just feeling down due to the cold weather and early nightfall. But the more I tried to ignore what I was feeling, the more “blah” I felt.

As I stared into my closet this morning, a bright green shirt called out to me. It is St. Patrick’s week, after all, and I knew it would make the two Irish nursing assistants at the infusion center smile. When I pulled it out of the closet, the design seemed…

When I was diagnosed with “some kind of arthritis, probably autoimmune” in 2011, I wanted to learn all I could. After years of being dismissed and disregarded by doctors because I “looked fine,” even this nondiagnosis was a big step for me. It was validation, after all those years,…

When I was in grad school, I was a teacher’s assistant for an English literature class about 14th century author and poet Geoffrey Chaucer. During my first opportunity to teach the class, we focused on his poem “Parlement of Foules,” in which St. Valentine’s Day is designated as…

When it rains, it pours … but when it snows, it’s sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis is often referred to as a snowflake disease because no two cases are exactly alike. Symptoms can begin at any age and affect any area of the body. It is often a chronic condition,…

A new year means new resolutions. I start every year with good intentions to do better than the year before, but I made a few resolutions last year that I haven’t fulfilled. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try; life got in the way and made some more difficult to complete…