Life With Sarcoidosis

In 2002, I had my first therapeutic massage at my chiropractor’s office, and it made my back feel so much better, and so relaxed, I was enthralled with the modality. I was so enthralled that I was determined to learn it.

The opportunity showed itself for me to go to massage school in 2007, and I was loving it, and pretty good at it. And then it happened in my second term of school. The hole in my heart made itself known. I waited a month for my summer break to have the operation to plug the hole. I had the operation and then they discovered the heart failure, which meant another operation in a month to implant the defibrillator.

With two heart operations in one month came a lot of restrictions on what I could do physically, so I opted to take a leave of absence. I took a year off to recuperate, see if I could continue.

A year later, in fall of 2008 I went back into my third term determined to finish what I started. And then it started, the fatigue, the breathlessness. I could barely move without getting out of breath. Back to the doctors I went and they suspected that I had Pulmonary Hypertension. They wanted to operate again, this time do a right heart catheterization to get some readings. I decided that the Universe was telling me that it was not time to return to school, so I withdrew.

Then last year, the Universe decided that it was time for me to finish, an out of the blue the opportunity opened up for me to finish my last year of massage school and I went back in September. It has not been easy, being stressful juggling work and school, exams, projects and the like. But last week I sat my final exams in school and passed them all, and so I walked out of that building a graduate. I did it. I made it. I finished what I started.

I still need to sit state and national board exams to be licensed to be an actual massage therapist, but I finished the schooling required to sit those board exams! I did it despite my conditions and the limitations they have.

I pushed pass this this thing called Sarcoidosis and the feelings of tiredness and difficulty breathing. How did I do it? With determination. Yes there were days I felt like crap and didn’t want to go on, but I pushed those feelings aside and I did not give up.

Now I am taking a couple of weeks off from studying, and then it’s back to the books to review for the state exams. That’s going to be a thrill to go over all that stuff, but it’s a means to an end. Will I actually practice massage therapy? Probably not as it may be too physically taxing, but the license opens up a whole world of possibilities in other healing modalities that are not so physically taxing, and I can’t wait to start looking into those as soon as I get my license.

Filed under: Heart Failure, Life, Pulmonary hypertension, Sarcoidosis, State of mind, Stress Tagged: | AICD, education, Heart Failure, life, Massage, Massage Therapy, Pulmonary Hypertension, Sarcoidosis, School