When my wife and I were in our early 20s, she developed sarcoidosis. It was the acute kind with hilar lymph nodes and erythema nodosum. That seemed to be the diagnosis, but I was a medical resident and as much as I wanted to believe this was an acute episode that would resolve, she and I both feared this might not be so. To me those lymph nodes on her chest X-ray looked very threatening. Could this be a lymphoma? And if it was sarcoidosis, how would it resolve? Were we facing a chronic illness ?I was not a stranger to the diagnosis of sarcoidosis. I myself had been diagnosed with possible sarcoidosis when I was 14. I remember that time very vividly: opening an envelope that I was to give to a radiologist and seeing the word sarcoidosis with a question mark and going to the library to fnd out that this disease could involve many organs—the lungs, the joints, the skin, and the heart. The 5-year mortality was quoted at 5–10%. It was terrifying. But what I remember best was leaving the doctor’s offce on a rainy dull Irish winter day with a prescription for pills. I looked at people passing me by and thought “They are normal” and “I have joined the ranks of the sick.” I had a dull feeling in my abdomen, my life was over.