Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness: Ramblings From a Chef Whose Body Constantly Rebels
Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness is a lived-experience podcast about life with sarcoidosis, heart failure, and the strange realities of long-term illness that no one prepares you for.
This podcast is for people living with sarcoidosis, navigating chronic illness, managing heart failure, or supporting someone with a rare disease.
Hosted by Tate, a private chef living with cardiopulmonary sarcoidosis, this podcast explores what it’s really like to survive chronic illness—not just medically, but emotionally, mentally, and socially.
From symptom flares and medical fatigue to identity shifts, dark humor, grief, resilience, and the quiet victories that keep you going, these episodes reflect real life as it’s actually lived.
This is not a medical podcast. There are no miracle cures and no toxic positivity—just honest reflections, lived experience, and patient-voice storytelling for people living with chronic illness, rare disease, disability, or caring for someone who is.
If you’re learning to live with sarcoidosis, navigating long-term illness, or simply trying to make sense of a body that doesn’t follow the rules anymore—you’re not alone here.
New episodes explore survival, adaptation, and finding meaning in a life that looks different than expected.
Follow the podcast to hear new episodes about living with chronic illness, surviving sarcoidosis, and the small victories that make the journey worthwhile.
Thoughts While Surviving Chronic Illness: Ramblings From a Chef Whose Body Constantly Rebels
The “What If” Game and the Man Who Didn’t Know He Was Sick Yet
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There was a version of me in 2002—forty years old, a working chef, exhausted in ways that made no logical sense, and listening to doctors insist that every alarming symptom was “stress.” Now that sarcoidosis is a familiar part of my vocabulary, looking back on that time feels like watching a movie where you want to yell at the character to turn around. Revisiting that moment made me rethink the “what if” game entirely and wonder how differently life looks when you finally know what your body was trying to tell you.
This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.
If you’d like to share a quick thought about the episode, you can text the show using the link in the episode notes. I read every message, but I can’t reply by text because your number is blocked to protect your privacy.
If you’d like a reply, or want to share more about your experience with sarcoidosis or chronic illness, please use the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations or outside project requests.
To donate towards Sarcoidosis research or to learn more about the disease, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research
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