Life After PH — Kathleen Sheffer

The cover of New York magazine’s Nov. 27-Dec. 10, 2017 issue features a child with cystic fibrosis (CF), whose mother, Jen Gann, is…

Like others in my life, my relationship to food has changed drastically since my heart-lung transplant. Food is so important to me that I once listed it as…

My friend Rachael got married last month, something neither of us believed she would live to do when we first met at a summer camp for kids with…

My transplant team told me to avoid any upper body exercises for the first 12 weeks. I waited a full three months and one day, and then I went rock…

Cackling, my classmates point at my face. “You look like a ghost!” one sneers. Confused, with no access to a mirror, I ignore their taunting and turn back to my…

I bought into the whole, “invisible illness/disability” thing until my condition became visible, but even less recognizable. Outside the clinical environment, few people guess that I am wearing…

Knowing my capacity for adaptation, I always struggle to answer when doctors ask, “How do you feel today, compared to how you felt a year ago?” My answer tends…

Last year, I wore a black face mask every day during the month of October. People stopped me on the street to guess my costume. I wasn’t posing as…

For months, I agonized over how to offer my condolences to people I’d never met for a loss about which I had no details. I imagined different situations. How different…

I was spending time with a friend, another long-term PH survivor, at a cafe last week, when she picked up a phone call. A few responses in, I…

The best product of my teenage angst was a series of abstract paintings titled “Attached to a Machine I through IV.” During my junior year of high school, I…

My sweet friend Teresa has stopped asking me if I have enough spoons to hang out with her. With my health stabilizing, appointments fewer and farther between, and my…