When I was fired years ago while battling sarcoidosis on unpaid sick leave, I was blindsided. The termination letter reached me at the end of the month, at the same time that my health benefits were stopped. I ended up in a similar situation as the estimated 5.4 million workers…

This week, my wife and I will be celebrating our 22nd wedding anniversary. As only a wife can document such an occasion, we’ve been together for 35 years total. Our son asked me how it feels. I told him I’ll let him know when the…

Sarcoidosis involves the lungs in most cases, so you may head to a pulmonologist and consider your care handled. I did, but it was only the beginning of sitting on the crinkly, white paper of examining room tables looking for answers. The first lesson I learned was that relying on…

I accomplished a few things that I’m proud of this past week. I finally finished one of my online nutrition courses, and I finally got my ice cream cake. The biggest and most important accomplishment is that I celebrated my 56th birthday. As the days quickly approached I…

People with sarcoidosis-associated pulmonary hypertension who have reduced physical fitness or worse gas exchange capacity live significantly shorter times without requiring a transplant, a new study indicates. The study, “Physiological Predictors of Survival in Patients with Sarcoidosis Associated Pulmonary Hypertension,” was published in the European Respiratory…

People living with or affected by sarcoidosis are invited to apply for membership in the new patient advisory committee being established by the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, known as the FSR. The committee is being created to help establish an advisory board to further bring patients’ voices…

With stifling June heat and pollen cleared by rainfall, I opened my windows. Drivers finished their workdays and inched forward in traffic outside my home. Within minutes, gentle breezes carried exhaust fumes inside. I thought that by living two stories up I would escape car pollution, a common…

Father’s Day was always a good time for my family when I was growing up. My brother and I were raised by a single mother, but my maternal grandfather and uncle were role models. We come from a large family, so we always had my…

Recently, I thought about my past hospitalizations and how isolated I felt. I guess the events over the past three months with social distancing had me feeling isolated … again. I thought about the two months I spent in the lung center at one of our hospitals in…

I’ve avoided others throughout the pandemic because of my sarcoidosis. I had thought that if I ever ditched social distancing, it would be to embrace family, but it wasn’t. The first person to touch me since March was a mammography technologist who positioned me for a procedure that was…