Living With IPF — Charlene Marshall

When you’re living with a life-threatening illness such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), it often feels like everything is on overdrive. What I mean is that I often feel oversensitive to the comments people make, or how they might react to seeing me on oxygen, and this…

After a week filled with others doing things to help me, including spending more than six hours on a weeknight helping me move to a new home, I was thrilled to be able to do something for someone else this weekend. The joy I felt from cooking…

Do you ever feel that sharing difficult news about yourself is a burden on your friends? I have been struggling a little with this recently and, as a result, I am feeling very alone. Writing this column is not easy. To explain further, I have an upcoming…

With Rare Disease Day 2017 coming up tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 28), I have been thinking a lot about responsibility. As someone living with a rare disease (idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF), I am feeling a bit of responsibility around my efforts to raise awareness for this disease, and…

I always have been fairly independent. When I was little I played outside alone in a small town where the “scary stories” of a big city just didn’t happen. I was lucky enough to buy my first car very early in my teenage years, which gave me…

I have tried countless times to describe the feeling of breathlessness to the people in my life who love me and want to understand what I am going through. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, how many times I try to describe what being short of breath feels…

When living with an invisible and chronic illness, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), I suppose it’s inevitable that you will have some really hard days (no matter how much you try to find the good in each day). To put it bluntly, some days just suck.

A very interesting situation unfolded the other day as I was purchasing something from our local music store. Typically speaking, when most people either see me with my oxygen, or learn that I am living with a terminal illness, they are not sure what to say. They may…

Please accept my apologies if this post is a little bit of a downer. One of the things I promised myself when I started writing this column was that I would be honest and include the good, the bad, and the ugly about idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF.) There…

There is tons of literature that endorses the idea of connecting with others for support when you’re faced with a chronic illness, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). I know that literature very well because I thoroughly examined it throughout the writing of my masters thesis this…

When you think of someone who has a lung disease, such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), it is easy to understand that physical exhaustion is likely a primary side effect. What may not be so easy to understand, however, is the mental exhaustion that comes with having…

Many of you who have been following my column know that I was lucky enough to return to Australia this past fall for three weeks. “Lucky”… it is such a funny word, because while some may say I was lucky to get to travel across the world, others…