The story of Christina
My name is Christina and I am from Melbourne, Australia. I am 60 years old. I was diagnosed with sarcoidosis 27 years ago after the birth of my fourth child.
At first I thought it was fatigue and that I was run down. I had pain in all my my joints especially the wrists and was unable to lift my newborn let alone attend to the other children. I was constantly fatigued and short of breath and it eventually became unbearable as I was finding it hard to breathe which made me go to my doctor. I also had a constant lingering cough that lasted for months.
I was unable to do simple tasks like put a load of clothes into the washing machine, loading the dishwasher, vaccumming, sweeping and even meal preparation.
Most things that I used to be able to do were now a major task for me.
I was finally diagnosed with sarcoidosis by my doctor who spent a lot of his spare time trying to work out what it was that I had.
I remember him calling me and saying to me I think I’ve finally worked out what it is that has been causing you to be so unwell lately. I immediately went in and saw him and he put me on prednisolone which helped ease the symptoms.
I then had to have a biopsy done to confirm his suspicions and he was right. Once I was diagnosed I was sent off to see a specialist to manage my condition.
This is an autoimmune illness which means I’m usually the first to catch anything that’s going around in my family or friends because of my low immunity. Makes it hard now that I have grandkids that always seem to have something, especially given that they attend day care where kids like to share their germs.
I do count myself lucky as sarcoidosis can affect the major organs including the heart, but so far I have managed to be free of any problems with any of my organs except for the liver which has become scarred and slightly enlarged.