Podcasts · Notes from the Edge
Living With an Invisible Illness: The Unbearable Fear and Loneliness
· 27 min · Episode 51
Episode Living With an Invisible Illness: The Unbearable Fear and Loneliness
In this deeply personal solo episode of Notes From the Edge, Lisa Lacy records at 3 a.m., during the hour when the world grows quiet and every unfamiliar sensation in the body becomes impossible to ignore.
Lisa lives with hereditary antithrombin deficiency, a rare congenital blood disorder that allows her blood to clot even while she is taking medication designed to prevent it. After surviving multiple pulmonary embolisms, permanent lung damage, years of medical dismissal, and surgical menopause, she knows what it means to live inside a body that cannot be completely trusted.
But this episode is about more than illness.
It is about the unbearable loneliness of carrying something no one else can see.
It is about looking capable while quietly monitoring every cramp, pressure, breath, and unfamiliar sensation. It is about needing accommodations without appearing visibly sick, explaining limitations other people cannot understand, and constantly trying to determine whether the danger is physical, hormonal, psychological, or all three.
Invisible illness can turn a person into the patient, investigator, advocate, and frightened witness of their own body. It can make ordinary life feel like a continuous negotiation between vigilance and joy.
Lisa explores medical trauma, mortality, menopause, fear, purpose, and the exhausting expectation that people living with chronic illness should perform strength simply to remain worthy of care.
This is not a story about becoming fearless.
It is a conversation about learning to live fully while acknowledging that fear is sometimes reasonable, uncertainty is real, and invisible does not mean imaginary.
Learn more about Lisa and Notes From the Edge at: https://www.lisalacy.com
See you at the edge.
Notes from the Edge with Lisa Lacy
Human conversations about trauma, identity, recovery, reinvention, relationships, leadership, and the lives we build after survival.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Links in the notes 4
Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them. Explicit shows are for adult profiles only, and children’s profiles hear only children’s shows. More about this list.