When Chronic Illness Makes Dreams Go Quiet

Climbing stairs with shortness of breath takes some planning, especially when I’m trying to make it look easy. One weekend away on business, I made at least twenty trips up and down a steep staircase, pacing myself until I got a little too confident and caught my arm on the corner of the railing. The bruise gave me something to laugh about and something harder to admit. Even after years of living with sarcoidosis, I still feel awkward stopping to catch my breath when someone might see me.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

I went in for a routine bubble test echocardiogram and left with a bruised wrist after a nurse placed an IV where I’d asked her to avoid. I’d spent years living with chronic illness and knew which veins usually worked for me, but the way the nurse handled my concerns and the remark my cardiologist made afterward left me questioning whether I wanted to return. I share why I stayed silent during the echo and what I decided to do about my care.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

A Body Rebels celebrates its first birthday with more than 110 episodes and listeners in 68 countries and 390 cities. Tate reflects on a year of sharing life with sarcoidosis and chronic illness, finding humor in difficult experiences, and discovering how far a personal story can travel.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

I’ve lived with sarcoidosis for twenty years, but my wife has lived with its consequences alongside me. After forty-five years together, I’ve begun thinking about everything chronic illness has changed in our marriage, including the freedom we once enjoyed, the plans we abandoned, and the sacrifices that never appear in my medical records. This episode explores the quieter cost of chronic illness on a relationship, and why I believe my wife’s experience deserves to be recognized as much as my own.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

I remember my wife asking whether I still had dreams, and having no answer. Chronic illness had narrowed my attention to appointments, medications, fatigue, and getting through another day. In this episode, I reflect on living with sarcoidosis and heart failure, the caution I began confusing with wisdom, and a rainy drive to hear Olivia Newton-John after forty years of waiting. I explore the difference between respecting my limits and silencing my desires, and how music helped me recognize something I thought I’d lost: my ability to want a future.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

My dad’s birthday is coming up, and I’m remembering the humor, presence, and ordinary pleasures of the father I lost when I was thirteen. He lived with Type 1 diabetes and heart disease, and after twenty years with sarcoidosis and my own experience of heart failure, I understand parts of his life differently. From an airport breakfast to a midnight disco, these memories bring me closer to the father I miss and the grown man I wish he’d had time to know.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

Living with chronic illness brings financial costs beyond copays and prescriptions. I spend hours untangling insurance denials, prior authorizations, confusing bills, and paperwork nobody counts as work. In this episode, I talk about the energy lost to phone calls, the anxiety of not knowing what I owe, and the frustration of having complex medical care reduced to codes on a page. I also explain why I believe specialized medical decisions deserve reviewers who understand the conditions involved.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

After my metoprolol dose increased to 200 mg, my wife and I began noticing troubling short-term memory problems. I was forgetting conversations and searching for things I had placed somewhere only moments earlier. In this episode, I share what those medication side effects looked like in ordinary daily life, why they frightened me, and what happened after I called my cardiologist and changed medications.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

Living with chronic illness changes what an ordinary to-do list means. My iPhone reminders might show a phone call, an errand, or a message, while leaving out the fatigue, brain fog, symptoms, recovery time, and decisions surrounding each task. In this episode, I look at chronic illness and productivity through the unfinished reminders waiting on my phone, and why a list never tells the whole story of what I did with my day.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

I canceled my lung transplant evaluation after months of research, prayer, and conversations with my wife, but I still want active medical care. Living with sarcoidosis and heart failure has made treatment decisions deeply personal, especially when recovery would ask so much of both of us. In this episode, I share why I declined the evaluation, my fear of being misunderstood by my doctors, and the care I still want as I look toward my future.This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.Contact A Body RebelsMore info about Sarcoidosis and to donate toward research: The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research