A roadblock to your future could be any number of things. Perhaps it is a new skill necessary to advance your career or the finances needed for a big purchase. Those are normal hurdles that many have to overcome to achieve their goals. A life-threatening lung disease is an abnormal…
Living with IPF — a column by Charlene Marshall
As I sit down to write this column, I am having a difficult day. Following a recent column about vulnerability, I heard from many readers who said my words encouraged them to express their own vulnerabilities. As a result of that feedback, I want to share that today I…
An emerging healthcare priority in the past decade has been patient-centered care. It is an idea that many facilities are still trying to define. Patient-centered care is simple to me: person first, patient second. I’m grateful to my healthcare team for getting this right. Before my diagnosis with…
You may be familiar with the proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” The phrase is believed to have originated from the Nigerian Igbo culture and is often cited in literature and popular media, most famously in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 1996 book, “It Takes a Village.”…
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who hates pulmonary fibrosis (PF) more than the patients living with it and their caregivers. This chronic and debilitating disease, characterized by progressive scarring in the lungs, is cruel and relentless. PF affects much more than the ability to breathe — it also…
One of my most vivid memories of my late friend Serena Lawrence is when we sat down to discuss my becoming a columnist for Bionews Services. I’d just been diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a lung disease characterized by fibrosis in the lungs that prevents oxygenation. Serena wrote…
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a little-known, complex, and misunderstood rare disease. I hadn’t heard of it before my diagnosis at the tender age of 28, just over three years ago. Learning to live with a fatal lung disease as a young adult is one of the hardest things I’ve…
In December, I wrote a column about slowly emerging from a month of being sick with pneumonia and the flu. I shared the importance of doing our best as patients living with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) to stay away from those who are sick, and why common illnesses…
These past six weeks have been difficult as I continue to recover from a horrible ordeal with both pneumonia and influenza. While I’ll never know how I came into contact with these viruses, I’ve become paranoid about touching surfaces such as grocery cart handles and doorknobs because of my…
I’ve held three full-time jobs in my career, each averaging about 40 hours per week. I’ve never tracked the number of hours I spend managing my chronic illness, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they equate to a full-time workweek. Since being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) three years ago,…
