Episodes

Sometimes the most exhausting part of chronic illness isn’t the appointments, the symptoms, the insurance nonsense, or the daily negotiations with a body that refuses to behave. Sometimes it’s an old relationship that comes b...

Medical trauma doesn’t always announce itself during the obvious terrifying moments. Sometimes it waits until an ordinary hospital visit, after routine blood work, when everything should feel familiar and manageable. This epi...

Living with chronic illness is not always shaped by dramatic medical events. Sometimes it is shaped by the tiny detours we quietly build into our days. In this episode, I talk about realizing I had been avoiding three ordinar...

Sometimes it is not the big symptoms that stop you in your tracks. It is the quiet ones. The bruises you cannot explain. The skin that tears a little too easily. Living with sarcoidosis and long term prednisone use means lear...

Living with chronic illness affects more than the person with the diagnosis. It changes marriage, caregiving, routines, fear, and the quiet emotional work shared inside a home. In this episode, I reflect on sarcoidosis, heart...

Wearing oxygen in public with sarcoidosis changes more than breathing. It changes the way people look at you, the way they try not to look at you, and the quiet assumptions they carry about what chronic illness is supposed to...

Waiting for medical test results with chronic illness can feel like sitting through an awards show you never agreed to attend. Every pause carries weight, every glance feels loaded, and your mind fills in the blanks before an...

A moment from childhood can quietly shape how we carry guilt for decades. In this episode, I share the story of losing my stepfather at thirteen and the belief I carried for years that it was somehow my fault. Living with sar...

Invisible illness can make ordinary social moments surprisingly complicated. A simple comment, a changed friendship, or a curious question can turn into an emotional negotiation when your body carries more than people can see...

People sometimes ask how anyone living with sarcoidosis can stay positive day after day. The answer isn’t motivation, inspiration, or some magical personality trait. It’s something quieter… something most people miss entirely...

A doctor’s waiting room is usually boring. Mine briefly turned into a low-budget suspense film because my portable oxygen backpack looked like it was smoking. Living with sarcoidosis and chronic illness means getting used to ...

On a quiet sunset drive, I stumbled into a raw moment between a fox and a crow—two wild creatures locked in instinct and mystery. What began as an ordinary evening turned into a reflection on survival, intuition, and the stra...

Getting an AICD implanted is not just a procedure. It is the moment heart failure stops sounding like a diagnosis on paper and starts feeling real in your body. In this episode, I share what it was actually like to hear I nee...

Hospital visits can start to feel like rehearsed disappointment when you live with sarcoidosis, heart failure, and the long, exhausting reality of chronic illness. I know that feeling well. So when I went to Westchester Medic...

Ever wonder why everyone suddenly claims they’re “allergic to bees”? In this cheeky yet heartfelt take from a chef living with chronic illness, I explore what our bee phobia really says about fear, faith, and city folks who p...

The words we use for chronic illness matter more than most people realize. In this episode, I reflect on a question my wife asked back in 2011, a question that changed the way I talk about sarcoidosis, heart failure, and illn...

Spring has a way of looking hopeful while also trying to crawl directly into your sinuses. In this episode, I talk about what it means to live with sarcoidosis, heart issues, and the shifting realities of chronic illness thro...

After a week of rain and gray skies, I stepped outside and found myself face-to-face with a monarch butterfly—a rare, breathtaking sight that reminded me why we let dandelions grow and bees buzz in our yard. Here's why moment...

A treatment built for cancer is now doing something that sounds almost unreal in autoimmune disease. In this episode, I talk through a story about CAR-T cell therapy, a woman whose body had been attacking her from multiple di...

What happens when chronic illness shows up and your first instinct is to blame yourself? In this episode of Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness , Tate reflects on growing up with guilt, being taught to question himself, ...

Chronic illness teaches you that control is often an illusion. Tests, insurance approvals, medications, and diagnoses can feel like they belong to systems far bigger than the person living inside the body. For someone living ...

After writing about winter tearing up my hands and posting a photo of my cracked, bleeding knuckles, I got an email that was less compassionate and more confused that I was not the race the sender expected. This episode is ab...

After insurance forced me to leave the pulmonologist who had known my lungs for twenty years, a brand-new doctor asked a question that hit me like a dropped skillet: had anyone discussed putting me on the transplant list? If ...

I learned respect the slow way—by watching what happened when women spoke and men decided they were “too much.” By listening in kitchens where the food mattered more than the people making it. And by living long enough with s...