Here’s the thing about chronic illness, even one from which you’ve supposedly recovered. It makes you paranoid. Years of feeling like crap, of seemingly endless medical appointments, of ineffective treatments, and of adjusted lifestyle messes with your mind. Ailments once dismissed as being “all in your head” eventually do get there. You become overly cautious, […]
Resolution 6 – That Bit About Losing Weight
6 I will lose 20 pounds by July 1st First of all, I need to correct a most unpatriotic error in this resolution. I hereby properly assert that I will lose 9.07185 kg by July 1st. It’s high time we Canadians fully embraced the metric system we’ve been halfheartedly flirting with for the past forty-five […]
OK, So Maybe I Am Cured?
One person commenting that I look healthier is an anomaly. Two people commenting that I look healthier is a coincidence. But three…three people commenting that I look healthier is most definitely a trend. Either something really has changed recently or I was one sick looking son of a bitch for a long time! Or, I […]
Will I Be Smart or Will I Be Pretty?
Wow! You folks are an optimistic bunch. I lead off my last letter with a sarcastic (I thought) rant about “being cured” of Sarcoidosis despite still feeling like crap and you all respond with joy and congratulations and talk of miracles. If ever there was an example of the limitations of the written word (or […]
Prescription for Disaster: The funny side of falling apart – Review
My wife and I were huge fans of the TV show House. We watched every week for all eight seasons and if we did miss an episode we dutifully downloaded it from a torrent site (did I just incriminate myself?) and watched it on the computer as soon as possible. I was already dealing with […]
The Embarrassment of Over-Exposure
Well that was quite the chore. In the hope of quickly boosting the volume of material on my brand new blog I went about cataloguing all the mentions of my health battles in the various letters I’ve sent to family & friends over the years. I took everything from single paragraph snippets to multipage rants […]
I’m Cured! Again! Apparently!
This was edited April 2014 from its original first published as part of my March 2014 letter. I’m cured! I’m cured! Thanks be to the great sacrificial kitten, I am cured! Oh, I don’t feel any different whatsoever, but I am cured! Behold the healing powers of dried platypus testicle elixir, I am cured! Chronic […]
Whither Thy Brain?
This was edited April 2014 from its original first published as part of my July 2013 letter. I even have a schedule. A weekly schedule in handy spreadsheet format reminding me which day is Laundry Day, which day is Veggie & Fruit Cutting Day and which day is Cleaning Day. I hang up the laundry […]
Best Doctors® Report
Back in 2011 the company my wife worked for offered access to Best Doctors® as part of the company health benefits plan. I used this opportunity to try the service out in hopes it might magically determine a cure for my health problems stemming from Pulmonary Sarcoidosis. Unfortunately, nothing new came of this process as […]
Ahhhhh. Depression.
Is it better to burn out than to fade away? For me this question becomes ever more poignant as my experience with Sarcoidosis grows ever more familiar. From a short term perspective, I have no doubt that my symptoms increase in intensity the more active I am. The more I do, the worse I feel. […]