Garrie Farrow has been fighting sarcoidosis for 15 years, and maybe longer. It has spread from her lungs to other parts of her body including her ears. Yet she is still working - and still fighting. In fact she spends a great deal of time helping other Sarcoidosis patients as well. In Episode 62 of the Sarc Fighter podcast, Garrie shares the story of how sarcoidosis started out in her lungs, how doctors may have mishandled the early diagnosis and how sarc has had a tragic impact on her fam...
Garrie Farrow has been fighting sarcoidosis for 15 years, and maybe longer. It has spread from her lungs to other parts of her body including her ears. Yet she is still working - and still fighting. In fact she spends a great deal of time helping other Sarcoidosis patients as well. In Episode 62 of the Sarc Fighter podcast, Garrie shares the story of how sarcoidosis started out in her lungs, how doctors may have mishandled the early diagnosis and how sarc has had a tragic impact on her family.
Show notes
Learn about the clinical trial from Novartis: https://bit.ly/3o9LXKk
Juliet's fundraising page: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/julietcoffer2
Remember these hashtags for April! #WhatIsSarcoidosis #MakeItVisible
Universal Barriers Podcast: https://www.stopsarcoidosis.org/sarc-fighter-podcast/
More on Universal Barriers https://www.stopsarcoidosis.org/events/universal-barriers-in-dealing-with-a-chronic-disease-a-sarcoidosis-perspective/
Ignore No More https://www.stopsarcoidosis.org/ignore-no-more-foundation-for-sarcoidosis-research-launches-african-american-women-sarcoidosis-campaign/
Sarcoidosis Awareness Film: https://www.purpledocumentary.com/
Nourish by Lindsey: https://www.nourishbylindsey.com/
Dr. Jinny Tavee's book, The Last Day of Suffering: https://www.amazon.com/Last-Day-Suffering-Health-Happiness/dp/0615542751
Read about the patient trial with aTyr 1923 https://investors.atyrpharma.com/news-releases/news-release-details/atyr-pharma-announces-positive-data-phase-1b2a-clinical-trial
Also -- Note that investors also believe in the promise of aTyr 1923: https://investors.atyrpharma.com/news-releases/news-release-details/atyr-pharma-announces-closing-863-million-public-offering
Yale University and sarcoidosis skin treatment | Dr. William Damsky: https://news.yale.edu/2018/12/26/yale-experts-treat-severe-disfiguring-sarcoidosis-novel-therapy
Stanford University Clinical trial | Dr. Mathew Baker: https://med.stanford.edu/sarcoidosis/clinical-trial.html
MORE FROM JOHN
Cycling with Sarcoidosis http://carlinthecyclist.com/category/cycling-with-sarcoidosis/
Watch the Prednisone Town Hall on YouTube https://youtu.be/dNwbcBIyQhE
More on aTyr Pharma: https://www.atyrpharma.com/
Do you like the official song for the Sarc Fighter podcast? It's also an FSR fundraiser!
If you would like to donate in honor of Mark Steier and the song, Zombie, Here is a link to his KISS account. (Kick In to Stop Sarcoidosis) 100-percent of the money goes to the Foundation. https://stopsarcoidosis.rallybound.org/MarkSteier
The Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research https://www.stopsarcoidosis.org/
Donate to my KISS (Kick In to Stop Sarcoidosis) fund for FSR https://stopsarcoidosis.rallybound.org/JohnCarlinVsSarcoidosis?fbclid=IwAR1g2ap1i1NCp6bQOYEFwOELdNEeclFmmLLcQQOQX_Awub1oe9bcEjK9P1E
My story on Television https://www.stopsarcoidosis.org/news-anchor-sarcoidosis/
email me carlinagency@gmail.com
The following is a web-generated transcript of my interview with Garrie. Please excuse any spelling or punctuation errors. jc
Welcome back to the Sarc Fighter podcast. And joining me now is Gary Farrow, uh who plays many roles within the foundation for Sarcodosis Research as a volunteer and is coming up on 16 years as a Sarc survivor. Garrie, welcome to the podcast.
Garrie Farrow: Thank you. Thank you. So much for having me today.
John Carlin: So you said it's 15 years plus almost 16 years. And you knew the anniversary date, didn't you?
Garrie Farrow: It's actually uh August. I started getting my appointments in April. So for me, April is the anniversary. But I didn't get the official diagnosis until August 16 years ago.
John Carlin: 16 years. That's a long time. And I want to hear about when did you first know something was wrong?
Garrie Farrow: Honestly, I knew something was wrong 20 years ago. Um uh I have a thing that I love, cute shoes and purses, and I have these fantastic boots that I love to wear. They were the greatest thing ever. And my feet and ankle started to swell. And um I used to play basketball in high school, so I'm used to ankle Springs. I know what my feet and ankles will do, but this was not normal. So probably uh about four or four and a half years in total going to different primary care doctors. And I am um a taller, larger woman. And so I've always been told, well, you need to lose weight. Like, I exercise every day. I'm not losing any more weight. But they're saying the reason my feet and ankles were swelling was because of the weight. So I went and lost more weight. Still couldn't wear the shoes, moved to uh a different city, found a uh new primary care position. Actually, my second one here in Tallahassee was the one who went, this is not normal. You are uh about 30, 31 at the point. This is not normal. Let's send you for a chest Xray. And that's how my journey officially started.
John Carlin: Wow. Chest X. You ankles hurt. So the first thing they do is send you for a chest X ray, which wouldn't seem intuitive, but I guess the doctor must have been thinking pulmonary sarcoidosis.
Garrie Farrow: Then she kind of mentioned she goes, It could be your lungs, it could be your heart. She goes for your feet and ankles be swelling. There's something vascular going on, and we don't know why. She goes, I'm listening to just using. I'm listening to your lungs. It sounded fine. You're exercising, um you're uh not complaining. You have any shortness of breath. So let's figure out what's happening with you.
John Carlin: Okay? Was that conclusive or was that just the next clue?
Garrie Farrow: The chest X ray was the next clue. They um realized at that point because you could see my lymph nodes on X ray and the lungs looked suspicious. And at that point, I was sent for a media style oscopy. Basically, biopsy ended up with a brand uh new scarf. And that's where they definitely confirmed that, yes, this was circadosis because after the chest X ray, they said this could be leukemia or Sarcodosis. The way I remember it was, I heard leukemia and possibly sarkidosis. And the leukemia scared me because I hadn't uh heard of soccer doses before in any major detail other than burning Mac.
John Carlin: Right. So after they figured out it's sarcoidosis with the lymph node biopsy then. Did they start with the normal prednisone routine?
Garrie Farrow: No. I um was seeing a pulmonologist local to my city, and I was told stage one, that four stages. And since I was at stage one, I had no other symptoms happening. There was no reason for me to go on any medications. And that if I ever started coughing or becoming short of breath while exercising, to basically come back. And I had one appointment a year later, just everything's still the same. But at no point was medication even talked about. I did go back to my um primary and asked, okay, now I've been diagnosed with Psychnosis. What does that mean? And she told me she didn't know. She goes, I could tell you this much of what I remember from medical school. I can't answer any of your questions. Go back to the surgeon and went back to him. And it was, yeah, you have stage one, but that's good because four is horrible. You're at one, so there's nothing to do. My um current pulmonologist, who specializes in Sarcodosis, uh she said, no, stage one is no better uh than stage four. You had symptoms, you just weren't coughing. She goes, Your lungs did not look good. There should have been some treatment started then, but that took um another shoot. I think it probably was probably about another three to four years before I started any official treatment.
John Carlin: That just amazes me. And I'm curious about the um stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, which is the terminology that we're used to hearing for cancer patients. And I've heard other patients that I've interviewed on the podcast talk about it a little bit. No one has ever uh used that term with me. Can you describe the difference between stage one and stage four? Other than that, it's worse.
Garrie Farrow: Yeah. What I was told originally was that, yes, my lungs um were cloudy, but they were not completely infiltrated. And you could see my lymph nodes on Xray. Stage four is pretty much you're on oxygen. The lungs are completely Gray uh and looks like um ground glass completely covers the entire lungs. At stage four is how it was described um to me initially, that each stage, your lungs get a little cloudier, a little bit more ground glass until it gets to the point where you're not able to breathe. What I've been told uh recently and confirmed with more research is that, yes, the um stages do impact how the lungs appear, but you could be on oxygen at stage two. You could be um walking around not fine, but without oxygen uh at stage four, it's just showing what the impact on your loans looks like when you're just trying to look at the X ray or the MRI or CT. Go um ahead and actually, stage one, I believe, only includes the link notes and um any of the others only impact just what the ones look like.
John Carlin: So you and I are both on a number of committees with the foundation for Sarcodosis Research. And uh what I'm hearing and maybe, you know, maybe you don't. But what I'm hearing is this stage one through 4 may be just reserved for pulmonary patients because everything you've described is lung involvement. Whereas with cancer, my understanding is when you have stage four cancer, let's say it starts in your kidneys or whatever, it then has spread to other parts of your body and it's metastasized. So when we talk about stage four with sarcoidosis, we're not talking about it spreading to other parts of your body, even though that can happen. But that's not what the stages describe exactly.
Garrie Farrow: Which I find interesting because it would make more sense that they actually classified it that way as they do in cancer, because technically, thankfully, due to one medication, my lungs are clear. My lymph nodes have shrunk in size from being really big to not being outfit. But I had other um organs being impacted by sarcotosis. So to me, following the cancer way of being, I'm probably more of a stage three just because I uh have multiple organs impacted by sarcosis. But currently it's only for lungs.
John Carlin: Got it. All right. And is it still currently after almost 16 years, is it still just in your lungs or has it spread?
Garrie Farrow: It's spread. And it actually took about ten years um to spread.
John Carlin: Um.
Garrie Farrow: I noticed some skin issues, went to my local dermatologist. And first I was told Eczema, then I was told Psoriasis, then I was told I had both went to sarcosis. Um dermatologist. No, this is sarcoid. That's what this is. And so, yeah, the past five years. So past five years, skin, eyes, bones. And now um I lost hearing in the left ear. Um and that's on immune suppressors. Um.
John Carlin: You said after about four years, a doctor said, oh, no, you need treatment.
Garrie Farrow: Yes.
John Carlin: What treatment did they come at you with first? And how has that progressed?
Garrie Farrow: The lovely steroids. The lovely steroids. I was on 60 milligrams for um about a year and a half. A little under. And um that, of course, weight gain, prediabetic, hypertension, um you name it. The moon face. All of it was taken off of that because of the impact. But at that point, there still was not a lot of discussion about new medications. And it was pretty much okay, your lapse look good. We're just going to kind of watch you. Then the eyes started, well, the skin. So then it was steroid injections directly into the skin and steroid creams, which thankfully um no over whole body and past. Then when the eyes and the bones kicked off, that's when I was put on methotrexate. No steroids at that point, thankfully. But then when the um bones kicked off, that's when they said, okay, I started low dose steroids and about five milligrams for three years. That pushed me over the edge with the diabetes. And let's see, um at that point, I think it was year two is when I went back, because by that point, I'm taking metformin and even though they said five um milligrams of steroids you shouldn't be gaining weight. I probably took uh 60 mg. I gained £80. Finally, after not being on steroids for a while, I had lost about 40 started the low um dose and they said you should be fine. Five milligrams is not going to impact you. I probably ended up gaining back 30. And so after year two, I said, okay, look, I need to switch because steroids and I are not working out. You're telling me I need to lose weight? I'm doing the things I need to do and yet my weight is not going in the right direction. It's still keeping up. So that's when I was taking off the steroids and put on the flutter mine, I think I believe I'm saying that correctly, but yeah, and I had to take off methotrexate and switch to uh Humera, which didn't work because of the bones. And I'm now doing rimicate infusions um or Influx map infusions with the Lip global cage.
John Carlin: Is that working so far?
Garrie Farrow: Actually uh going June to get repeat X rays of my fingers. Uh they showed no further damage is what it was last year. So we're hoping it remains the same now.
John Carlin: We've kind of just jumped right to I want to hear more about your eyes and your bones. Sure. When you have sarcoidosis uh in your bones, what does that look or feel like? How do you know it's there? What is the deal?
Garrie Farrow: I know it's kind of hard to see on uh camera, but the fingertips of these three fingers are actually about now only about two times the size of the fingers on this hand. And uh what started off as just a finger swelling then turned into I would go to pick up a pen or I'd go to pick up my purse or anything and um I could literally feel something crunching in my fingertips. And I was just like weird um because every once in a while your fingers might pop or you crack something. But I went, no, that is literally in the fingertips. I went to my local PCP and he told me it was finger clubbing due to socketosis and lack of oxygen. My sister actually has or has finger clubbing. She was diagnosed after I did because I pushed her. And so I've seen what finger um clubbing looks like and all her fingers were impacted.
John Carlin: I've never heard that word before. Finger clubbing. Fingers look like little clubs.
Garrie Farrow: Yes. I don't know if you can kind of tell on camera. You see how this one's more rounded than the other?
John Carlin: Yeah.
Garrie Farrow: It becomes very bulbous is the other word that they like to use. And your nail bed actually changes shape where instead of being just if you look at your hands, just regular nail bed, they actually expand because since the tip of your finger is getting bulbous, your nail bed has to go with it. And it actually started splitting because my nail bed couldn't keep up with the growth of the finger. So it was splitting. And as I initially pushed um back because I told him that every time I come to see you or see my specialist, my oxygen gets recorded at 98%. 99%. I'm not wheezing that I'm uh aware of, and nobody's told me otherwise. And I've had breathing tests. And if that was the case, all of these should be bulbusy and look funny. It is literally. These three went to see my Pomodologist, and I was on methotrexate. And so they were really concerned about any of the other side effects that method track state could have. And she goes, okay, is there anything else going wrong with you? Because your loans look great. I don't normally see patients like you because phenomenologist. So I'm not used to seeing healthy loans anymore. Anything else going on? And I went, look. Uh and she goes, that is not normal. And I haven't seen that with methotrexate patients. Let's send you for a hand Xray, which then worked into a whole body bone scan. And I now have a Rheumatologist because they realize that uh on Xray, my um fingertips, all of them, actually. But these three are the worst. My body has attached the bones um to the point to where it is broken down and my body is reabsorbing the bone. So the reason they're swelling is because um there's fluid, and that's what causes the swelling. And I actually have four toes involved as well. But all of them, you can tell all of them have been attacked. It's just these three were hit the worst because I dropped a box on them while moving.
John Carlin: Sorry, is it painful? Not dropping the box, but I'm just walking around every day with your toes. And does it hurt?
Garrie Farrow: Yes, it depends upon what I've done that day. Um some days are worse than others. I am a trainer, so I constantly um typing. And I love playing video games. So playing video games, typing certain things. Um there are days where I don't want to use my fingers. It's not worth it. Or I have become very adept at using my thumb and my ring finger on the right hand because um it's not sensitive to touch per se, because doing this does not hurt. But actually going to grab something unless I can um figure out a way to grab it down here. Think of the worst bruise um that you've ever had. You'll get that you hit it just right, and it doesn't really hurt until you get it in the right place. That's what it feels like.
John Carlin: Okay, let's talk about your eye.
Garrie Farrow: Yes.
John Carlin: What were your symptoms initially?
Garrie Farrow: Just a lot of redness. Tallahassee knowns for pollen. Uh and so I just put it off that it's the pollen. Um it is the green season, and it's uh a lot of redness. And then the conjunctive not conjunctivitis, but outside of your eyes were constantly inflamed, like, felt like I had dirt in them. And again, pollen. I just pushed that off. It wasn't until I have glasses that actually with a tent. I just lost the name of it that you go outside. The sunlight and your lenses.
John Carlin: Yeah, they get darker. Yeah.
Garrie Farrow: I walked outside. Even with that on, literally stopped in my tracks, uh shut my eyes, and was like, oh, my God, the Sun's too bright. My eyes literally hurt. The only way I could um describe it is like a shooting pain through my eye. And I stood there just going, oh, my. Okay, this isn't normal.
John Carlin: When was that? How long ago was that?
Garrie Farrow: That was probably about uh six years ago. Yeah, about six years ago. Um and again, I went to my local Icare uh provider, and it was like, yeah, this is arthritis. And was um prescribed steroid drops. Then it continued, and I was diagnosed with Uvitis and ended up getting referred to an ophthalmologist uh because I kept going to my optometrist because, of course, my glasses. And they were like, yeah, this is a Sarcodosis issue, not just, you know, you have recurring eye infection. And so that's how the eyes joined up.
John Carlin: Wow. Is that controlled?
Garrie Farrow: Currently, yes. Thankfully, with the eyedrops, uh uh I think I was on the eyedrops for about a year, and I go back in right now, thankfully, because the last test, uh my last exam came back fine. I'm set to not have to see them for a year, but when my eyes are unhappy, I probably see the ophthalmologist about every three months. And drops and tests I do because of the last one, has a beginning of a glaucoma in one eye because of the recurrent flares in my eyes. So we're kind of watching that.
John Carlin: You said the magic word flare, which is what a lot of Sarcodosis patients fear.
Garrie Farrow: Yes.
John Carlin: You get everything under control, and then all of a sudden you wake up one day and things aren't right, and the Sarcodosis has become active wherever it is in somebody's body. When you just use the word flare, are you talking about flare, as in bright light hitting your eye or a flare up of the Sarcodosis in your eye?
Garrie Farrow: Flare of the sarcidosis in my eye. Uh for me, the paint, it feels like a flare of a light in my eye, but my body has um flared itself. There's something in my immune system that has gone into overdrive and done its attack like it usually likes to do.
John Carlin: You mentioned Humera, and that didn't work. You said, because of the bones, I think, is what you said. What is the connection between Humera and bones?
Garrie Farrow: Actually, none. The only reason I was put on humor was an experiment because um the methotrexate obviously worked perfect for the lungs. But because my bones were starting to go, she was like, okay, we can't put you back on steroids, obviously. So what can we do? And at that point, um Humera. Uh it wasn't officially approved for off label use, but it was showing some impact on the immune system with patients that had Crohn's disease um and really severe, I believe IBS, um and I apologize if I'm incorrect on that one, but it was definitely used in Chrome's. She said, okay, let's try something, because obviously your body is still in overdrive. Let's find a different method to shut off uh your immune system. Humera was picked because there uh was another medication, and I'm blanking on it right now that again, it was another off label cancer medication, but there were so many other side effects, and one of them because of uh where my weight and my diabetes were. Uh she was really hesitant to use that one. So that's why Humor was used. And it was just a test to see. Would it help with my fingers? Because at this point, my options were limited.
John Carlin: And uh you ran it, what, for six months?
Garrie Farrow: I've been on actually a year because they said it's six months just to figure out if things are going left or right. And the first six months was to make sure my loans did not reengage, for lack of a better word, be changed in how they were going. The bones, after um six months at least, didn't show further damage. They were like this, and I'm never going to regrow the bone, but at least it didn't look like it had uh gotten worse. The reason I had to switch from Humera to the influx of Infusions is the bones remained where they were, but then I lost um the hearing in the left ear, and they're like, okay, so obviously something is not quite right again. So Humor kind of stable things, um or at least shut up my immune system enough, but not enough. So that's why I'm on infusions.
John Carlin: Let's talk about your ear. What happened there.
Garrie Farrow: Again? My wife and I woke up one Sunday morning with a sinus infection. I'm sorry. Through all of this with the whole eye things, I've had problems with my sinuses um um for quite a while, but it was after the eyes I ended up Sarcodosis caused me to have polyps um inside my nose and in the back of my throat had the polyps removed. They're like, yes, this is definitely sarcoidosis, but you're already on all these other medications. That's um what we would have prescribed for you. So call us back if something changes. I woke up one Sunday with a very bad sinus infection. Um the usual signs and symptoms. And that's um when I woke up that Sunday morning and my boyfriend asked me something, but he was on this side of me and I did not um hear him at all. And he thought I was mad at him. So it was later on the day, um throughout the day, he was like, okay, what did I do to make her mad at me that she wouldn't respond to me? And it wasn't until later on that day that he um asked, I said, I didn't hear you. And so he went over to that site and said something I'm like, I literally can't hear you. I had the same day appointment Monday. And they were like, oh, that's um your sinus infection. Once your sinus is clear, here's an antibiotic. Your hearing will return three weeks later. Found out um my ear hairs are fine. I have no tumor pressing on the nerve. Further research. It's just one of the uh symptoms that you get. Single sided hearing loss caused by sarcosis.
John Carlin: That is just amazing to me.
Garrie Farrow: Yeah.
John Carlin: So you're walking around your job is you are a trainer. What kind of training do you do?
Garrie Farrow: Software. Technically, the official Titles application is Trainer. Well, the full name is Electronic Health Record System. I focus more on the practice management side, but when we do major upgrades and releases, both of us end up training the doctors, the nurses uh and receptionists on how to use our system and what changes come into being.
John Carlin: You have the sarcoidosis all over your body. How does that impact your ability to just live your life day to day?
Garrie Farrow: It has an impact. And of course, the medication side effects play a greater role in how far I do things. The pain, like I said, it's preventing um me from I used to knit as well. I don't do that anymore because my fingers get in the way. And then eventually after time, it really hurts too. Nit I saved my typing for work so I don't play online um video games as much as I used to. Just because I need to be able to type at work. Just anything, to be honest with you, um gripping a jar to try and open it. So I bought a jar opener hearing AIDS so that I can hear on the left side. Um because the other part I realized with me not hearing, I was starting to lose how well I was enunciating words. Uh i won't call it slowing my words, but I was losing just um how well I was speaking. I parse um out my time, to be honest with you, if I know I'm going to take a trip, I don't do much before the trip and I'm definitely not doing a lot after it because I'm just that tired. And when I say trip, my doctors are in Gainesville, which is about a two and a half hour drive from where I am. And going to see a doctor is a trip. Because if I do it in a day, uh when I come back, I'm not going out to eat. I'm not doing what I usually do.
John Carlin: You're not talking about going to Paris?
Garrie Farrow: Yeah, I wish. I really wish. No, I'm just going to see my doctor. My father lives two and a half hours in the other uh direction. So even just that most people it's just a day trip. No, just a day trip is a lot of energy.
John Carlin: The fatigue is real. Then. Do you take a lot of naps? Do you need the naps? Do you need extra sleep at night?
Garrie Farrow: Yes. Problem is, you get to that point where you're so tired. Even though you lay down, you can't fall asleep certain days. I'm like that I've laid down. I would uh love to go to sleep, and I'm just that tired of where I can't. But yeah, naps are real. Naps are required.
John Carlin: Wow. Um sorry. Something's going on with Zoom on. My end used to be if there's just two people, you could talk as long as you wanted. And it's now telling me that I've got that 40 minutes time limit that you used to only get when there were more than two people. And I'm afraid it's going to time out on me. I've still got a lot more things I want to ask you.
Speaker UNK: Sure.
John Carlin: Let's end this meeting and go back um and click that same link again and see if it'll let us start another one.
Speaker UNK: Absolutely.
John Carlin: And if it doesn't, I'll go in and I'll get another link and send um it to you. Just watch your email.
Speaker UNK: Okay.
John Carlin: All right. So I'm going to end it and then let's click the link and see if we can rejoin.
Speaker UNK: Okay. Perfect.
Garrie Farrow: Okay.
John Carlin: All um right. Garrett, you're doing a lot of work with the foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, as we mentioned just a moment ago. And one of them is you're on the Women of Color committee. For people who aren't up to speed on that, what is that? Committee's responsibility?
Garrie Farrow: Sarcasm actually impacts the African American women. I was going to African American community, and it does. Uh but women are more impacted by the disease that if there's going to be a higher hospitalization rate, higher mortality rate, it impacts African American women about up to 13 times more often than African uh American men, even though they are impacted by the disease. Unfortunately, my sister died um from her circuit is three years ago. That's um what made me um join FSR.
John Carlin: We buried the lead. I'm so sorry.
Garrie Farrow: That's um okay. No, actually, it's not that I don't talk about it, but it's really uh the reason I joined FSR and why I applied in the first place, because um of her experience, um the difference between her experience and mine. When I saw the Women of Color committee come up, that really made me go, okay, I need to be a part of this because of her experience and mine and just in general uh and talking with different African American people and some of our residents and going um to see a physician, I don't want to say it's lack of exposure um to certain diseases and a lot of us are more prone to I'm always tired. I don't feel well. I don't have time to go to the doctor. So he's just going to tell me or she's just going to tell me what I already know. So I'm just not going to go. And I wanted to be a part of that committee to help get more word out there that this is not a disease, that you can just be like, oh, it'll be fine. I'm tired. I'll be tired tomorrow. I'll be tired next week. Let's just wait it out. Um and it's this disease. You cannot just wait. The longer you wait, the more damage that's done. And you can't recover from that damage. Once it's damaged, it is damaged. So that's what made me decide to join up.
John Carlin: What was your sister's name?
Garrie Farrow: Sharon. Sharon.
John Carlin: And she had pulmonary sarcoidosis.
Garrie Farrow: Pulmonary and skin. She never went in and got diagnosed for skin, but the spots on her face, um like you have the exact same thing. Go see a dermatologist. Don't have time, don't feel good. From the city that we were from. Um and her doctor uh only used prednisone. Steroids was their fallback. Even when with my methodrest state, when I realized what it was doing for uh me, I was on the road from Gainesville back home, calling her. Go see your doctor, get methotrexy. I promise you, it impacted her lungs away. I'm not sure if it was just due to time. She was a year and a half older than I was, so I'm not sure if it's just due to age, just due to um if Sarcodosis had been passing or a whole lot longer. Um so, yeah, by the time they caught it, by the time with steroids, her lungs couldn't take it literally. At the end, they said that we could um not use any more medication to get any of the fluid off of her lungs. Her lungs are filling up faster than we can get it off of her. And that's what actually killed her.
John Carlin: Oh, that must have been so sad.
Garrie Farrow: It was devastating on the family, because that's not what's supposed to happen. As my father said, you're not supposed to bury your children. So it was hard.
John Carlin: So you stepped up and reached out to the foundation for Sarcodosis Research, even though you had been dealing with Sark yourself for a good long time at that point, yes. And so now you are a fellow advocate, and our role as advocates is to help other Sarcidosis patients.
Garrie Farrow: Yes.
John Carlin: You're on the Women of Color committee. You're on the patient advisory committee with me. And are uh you a Navigator as well?
Garrie Farrow: I've um applied to be a Navigator. The application is uh closed in a couple of weeks, I believe.
John Carlin: Okay, so what does it feel like these days when your job is outreach and counseling other people with Sarcoidosis, and what do you say to them?
Garrie Farrow: It's a weird sensation, to be honest, because um it's not where I saw my life going. Even though I'm a trainer, I'm an introvert. And training for me is easy because I'm talking about the software. It's not talking about me in working with FSR, doing the advocacy. Um it's a different place for me to be because I'm talking about yes, I'm talking about the disease, but I'm talking about my experience with it. So it's pushing me outside myself in ways that I'm not usually used to, even though I do speak publicly for a living. So it's a different place. But I have to um admit that I do like it because getting the word out about psychedosis helps. Unfortunately, my coworker, I think she's okay with it because um I was so vocal about it at work. She was running into some health issues and was diagnosed with pulmonary psychnosis end of last year. Yeah. And it was just like, oh, okay. I'm sad that you're part of my club, but I'm glad you got diagnosed. Right. Because otherwise she was having some interesting things that kept coming and um went and had a biopsy.
John Carlin: So many people say they don't know anybody else that has sarcidosis. You had a sister and now you got a coworker.
Garrie Farrow: Yes.
John Carlin: It's amazing. So your coworker is doing okay?
Garrie Farrow: Yes. She's currently on methotrexate, and I think the last time they did uh the CT scan, things were looking good and they were going to keep her on the same dose. But she's in the first six months. I believe so, yeah. She's got that the milestones to hit before you can really say things are going well.
John Carlin: Is she also an African American woman?
Garrie Farrow: No.
John Carlin: Okay. So it uh just keeps on coming then. But I'm sure that she was curious because she had you as a resource.
Garrie Farrow: Yes. And it was one of those kind of different um conversations because it's not like she works in my Department, but she's not like a close coworker. So it was one of these we had to kind of talk to you for a second. And she goes, yeah, I'm going in. And I don't know quite what to do or what to expect. So I put on the FSR hat. So the first thing you need to do is go out to the FSR website, go to stocksoccervices.org, have your husband go out there as well, because your life is going to change, even though you haven't been feeling well and it's already been changing. If any medications are involved, then please don't do steroids. Do some, see what you can do. Your life is going to change and how it impacts you and your family. And she's got grandchildren. Um and you need to do this research now and don't think it can only stay within the loans. You need to think whole uh body. Don't just discount. Well, I'm older. This must be arthritis pain. It's like maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
John Carlin: Uh are you doing support groups or anything like that?
Garrie Farrow: I'm not. I thought about it, and my introvert little Gremlin was like.
John Carlin: Um.
Garrie Farrow: Uh I thought about it and looked and um I think this is the introvert part. There's nothing local to me. And so I was just like, okay, I never um done the next step.
John Carlin: I was down the road a little bit with starting. We were going to have an event and maybe have a support group grow out of that here in my region in Roanoke, Virginia. And then the pandemic hit and everything got canceled. And that was also about the time I started the podcast for me. I kind of feel like the podcast is my support group because people are listening to you right now, and they're hearing what you're saying. They're hearing what you're going through. And at least if they're looking for answers, they're hearing some of what is normal if there is such a thing with Sarca Dosis. So they may have similar symptoms or similar issues with the prednisone or with the methytrexate or with the ramicade you've mentioned all these things are things that I've been on as uh well. Initially. I'm just curious because you um said for a long time you didn't reach out to FSR and you wrote an op Ed for your local paper, and you said you didn't really research Sarquidosis at first. Was it because you just didn't want to know? Or you just kind of trusted your doctors to know what needed to be known and you were going to take your medication and go on with your life, go back to that time and think what was going on with you then?
Garrie Farrow: I trusted my doctor in that stage one. And again, my problem was I was so focused in on leukemia. That was my fear. And I had come home, and I found one dot Gov website that mentioned sarcoidosis and lung involvement. I was like, okay, but leukemia was huge. So once I got that diagnosis of sarcoidosis, I was so relieved that it wasn't leukemia that uh I didn't push further on myself or the doctor. Because, of course, now hindsight being 2020, even stage one, I um should have said, Excuse me, are we sure I don't need to do something else? Anything else. I didn't even think about getting um a second opinion. And even the only thing I will say, thankfully, when I went back to um my primary and she told me she didn't know anything about Psychro dosage and couldn't answer any of my questions and go see the surgeon, I ended up switching to an internist who knew about Sarcodosis. Uh but even then again, I put that trust in the physicians, um didn't educate myself on it until things started changing.
John Carlin: Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you jump in. I hear the same thing from people that and it can be kind of scary. I've been on some of the online threads where people just say such terrible, awful things about what's going on with Sarcodosis, but they're not saying it in a reasonable, thoughtful way, which isn't their job to do that. But I just didn't want to see it, and I didn't want to know. Terrible disease, terrible medication, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it would just stop. There wasn't any further explanation because people were just typing responses to one another, almost like reading a Facebook thread on a controversial issue, and people were just going after each other.
Garrie Farrow: And nobody's talking about that. Okay, yes, sarcoidosis is not a fun disease, but there are ways to function that yes, your life has changed, but this is not this is not the end of it. There's other things that you can do. Nobody likes to put that on the thread. That's not as interesting when you're looking at posts, right?
John Carlin: Yeah. People just have to be so sensational with their posts, but they're probably on that thread because they're either bored or mad or both. And so you're seeing the worst of I just stopped looking, honestly. But I found that I probably should have looked further faster. And I'm hearing you say the same thing.
Garrie Farrow: Absolutely. And I'll admit because I was surprised that I didn't know how long um FSR had been around. That when I started searching for sarcoidosis. Originally, I only got the Gov um sites, Medline, WebMD, and I just lost the name of the other one that has a symptom um checker on it that no doctor loves. And uh I did not start finding out about FSR until I probably was starting to search. Every week I would go out and just um Sarcodosis, pulmonary Sarcodosis. Let me see what I can find, because this is ridiculous, that I know it's rare. And at that time, I think it was 200,000 in the US were being affected. But there has to be more. There has to be more that this um can't be just this couple of sites. And luck was on my side and FSR popped up because I was starting to get to that point to where I think I've been doing that for about a couple of months. Uh i was starting to get frustrated because the information was always the same short little info or like you said, the posts that were just depressing me, making feel like, okay, I'm not going to die tomorrow, but I'm going to pass soon. I don't want to hear this anymore, uh but I found that it's our site.
John Carlin: Right. Is there anything else you want to add to this conversation? I appreciate you kind of bearing your soul here with our listeners.
Garrie Farrow: Honestly, if one person okay, not one. But if um more people would, if you're ever finding yourself going, okay, this is discounting your own symptoms and you're thinking, well, it must just be allergies, oh, I'm just tired. And I'm always tired. Sarcoidosis doesn't just impact the lungs. The um heart can be impacted. Your eyes, the skin, bones, you name it. It can um impact the body. And even with I don't have time, I don't have the energy. Just go to that one appointment and talk to your physician, um even if you're not the one having the symptoms. Everybody talks to their friends, everybody talks to their family. And you always hear that common issue with that family member, with that friend, talk to them, get them to go. Because even if it's not Sarcodosis, it could be anything and everything else they need to go in and be seen. And it's not to say that don't trust your doctors, um but if they tell you, okay, we think you have this or we have confirmed this diagnosis. Do your research go out there? The internet is huge. Yes. You're going to run into some information that's when you do more research just because you found one answer, you found one source you don't stick with just that one source. You look at everything as much as you can and get that knowledge for yourself so you know what you're going to have to live with and that helps better prepare you for your next office visit.
John Carlin: Find a doctor that is a specialist in sarcoidosis. Yes, there are lots of doctors who may have one or two Sarcoidosis patients. That's not the same thing.
Garrie Farrow: No, not even close to it. As you are well aware, Sarcidosis is so varied that there's a commonality amongst all of us. But how sarcadosis impacts you is different than how it impacts me and yes, it is a disease of granuloma but how your body takes that granuloma you really need someone who has a breadth of knowledge not just like you said, one or two Z is not enough knowledge for this disease, right?
John Carlin: thank you for joining me on the Sarfighter podcast.
Garrie Farrow: Thank you thank you for having me. I love listening to you. I've watched your podcast before so this is fantastic. This was fun.
John Carlin: Great. Thanks.
Garrie Farrow: Thanks. Bye.
