Category: Podcast

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 about sarcoidosis, chronic illness, medical stereotypes, and the exhausting way people reduce human beings to categories instead of meeting them with empathy. It is about what happens when statistics stop being information and start becoming assumptions, and why people living with rare disease deserve to be seen as people first, not demographic surprises. Because pain is pain, illness is illness, and ignorance adds nothing useful to either.

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This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

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 you live long enough with sarcoidosis and serious lung disease, transplant eventually enters the room. But hearing the question and wanting the answer to be yes are not the same thing. This episode is about that first appointment, the shock of being asked so bluntly, and why my answer was already there, waiting.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

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 sarcoidosis and heart failure to realize time is expensive, energy is limited, and “just ignore it” is the laziest advice on earth. This isn’t a victory speech or a halo-polishing session. It’s the story of how a kid who stayed quiet learned when silence starts sounding like agreement… and what finally made me stop swallowing my words.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

When you grow up learning who doesn’t show up, you start measuring love in smaller, sharper ways—like footsteps on a porch, a hand on your forehead at the school nurse’s office, or the kind of laughter that keeps you upright when your body (hello, sarcoidosis) is acting like it pays rent. This is about the dad I lost too soon—the one who earned the title—and the strange little lessons that followed me into adulthood… right up to cardiology appointments and the moments I have to decide whether I’m going to fold or make a joke.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research 

Some people collect souvenirs when they travel. I collect medical printouts. One routine cardiology visit handed me a neat little report, the kind that looks boring until you realize it’s basically a receipt for a moment your body tried to freestyle without permission. If you live with sarcoidosis and heart failure, you already know the feeling: you can be doing something painfully normal, and then your insides decide to audition for a disaster movie. This is the story of the day my heart tested the emergency system—and what it taught me about limits, denial, and why “I’m fine” is sometimes a full-blown lie.

Send A Text To Tate

Support the show

This podcast is narrated using an AI voice. The words, reflections, and lived experience are my own.

To respond to this episode, use the text link in the episode notes, or send longer messages through the contact form at tatebasildon.com. I’m not able to respond to solicitations, outside projects, or interview requests.

To support sarcoidosis research or learn more, please visit The Foundation For Sarcoidosis Research