The older I get, the more I relate on a spiritual level to Mike the Situation from “Jersey Shore” trying to force his head through a concrete wall in Italy. A few weeks before my 30th birthday, my PH specialist gave me the green light.
Living with a chronic illness is both mentally and physically exhausting. Managing the seemingly endless symptoms of fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness, muscle pain, and headaches can seem like enough work for a lifetime. These symptoms are considered as being “common” for those…
With Mother’s Day quickly approaching on May 13, I’m trying to figure out this wound I left open over the years. Like many other young adult women with PH, I found out at the age of 25 that pregnancy would more than likely kill me.
YOLO, aka, “You only live once.” For much of my late teens and early 20s, almost everyone I knew lived by this motto. It was a way for us to justify our rebellious behavior, and for me, it was a way to…
“Do you wear glasses?” The question took me completely off guard. I was standing in line at my local breakfast spot and staring the cashier in the face, wondering if I did, in fact, have glasses on. The cashier pointed at two lines under my eyes that one…
For the first couple months of my recovery from a heart-lung transplant, I had a one-hour radius from the hospital. A woman I met in a waiting room assured me that eventually, I would be able to travel internationally. “They just load you…
Going with the flow and finding balance in life often seem impossible with a chronic illness. I wish I had the luxury to release control to the day. I wish I could just pack a bag for a spontaneous road trip, head out with…
April is National Donate Life Month, a chance to celebrate those who have saved lives through organ donation. Not everyone can be an organ donor — most people won’t be — but everyone can inspire organ donor registration. Rebecca Joy Butler’s legacy…
*** “Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way.
With pulmonary hypertension, I have been through a variety of difficult days, including days when I feel I can’t fight this disease anymore. They are the days that make me question my own physical and mental strength. On these days, I think to myself, “How…
I’ve been quiet in this space for longer than I intended to be. Call it writer’s block or an exceedingly busy work schedule or no particular reason, really. I just didn’t put fingers to the keyboard in a way that produced any writing worthy of sharing with the…
During my senior year of high school, a teacher assigned the task of creating a “bucket list.” I was furious. A term popularized by the 2007 movie of the same name, a bucket list is a list of things one wants to do before dying —…
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