Not a Stop Sign

What my health journey taught me about purpose, resilience, and the gift of one more day

Let me tell you something I have learned the hard way: some seasons of life do not ask your permission before they arrive.

They show up uninvited, rearrange the furniture, and dare you to find the purpose hiding inside the disruption. That is exactly what happened to me. And I want to share it with you: not to alarm you; not to invite your pity; but because I believe with my whole heart that my story belongs to all of us.

What does it look like when someone who has devoted her life to helping older adults thrive suddenly becomes one of us who is struggling? I am about to show you.

When the Body Sends a Message You Cannot Ignore

In October 2022, what was supposed to be a routine medical procedure changed everything. A complication during that procedure led to aspiration, and that single event tipped a set of scales that had already been quietly shifting. Years of teenage smoking I had left behind at 21. Years of breathing polluted air in Asian countries where my husband Tim and I had lived and loved. Secondhand smoke I could not escape. None of it had stopped me. But all of it together, plus that one unexpected “event”, moved me from “slightly winded on a hill” to a full diagnosis: COPD and MAC disease.

MAC disease. Even the name sounds foreign. It is a slow-growing bacterial infection of the lungs, the kind that requires a long, aggressive treatment; the same treatment given to tuberculosis patients. My pulmonologist told me it would take twelve to eighteen months. I nodded and thought: I did not come this far to sit down now.

The Night Tim Googled “Emergency on the Big Island”

Tim and I have an annual tradition. Every February we fly to the Big Island of Hawaii to watch the humpback whales. It is one of my favorite things on earth: those enormous, wise creatures breaching against the blue, and it is baby whale birthing season. In ln late February 2023, we went as planned, even though I had begun treatment for MAC disease. I told myself I would be fine.

I was not fine.

By March I was experiencing fever, difficulty breathing, and a weakness so overwhelming I could barely lift my arms. At ten o’clock at night, I asked Tim to take me to the ER. Neither of us knew a thing about hospitals on the Big Island. So Tim did what any sensible husband does in a crisis… he Googled it. We chose the hospital in Waimea over the one in Kona because we love their farmers market. I am not even joking. You make the best decision you can with what you have.

My blood pressure was dangerously low. Standard treatment was not working. Doctors inserted a port directly into my heart and administered medications to stabilize me. They admitted me to the ICU and sent Tim back to the resort, alone.

I want to pause there. Because that is the moment I leaned hardest on something I have always believed: God is my provider and my guide. And right there in that hospital room, He proved it.

One year earlier, on a connecting flight between islands, the Universe sat me next to a woman that just seemed like a gift from God. We talked and laughed and connected in the way you sometimes do with a stranger who turns out to be not a stranger at all. When I ended up in that ICU, that precious friend and her husband stepped in. She helped Tim with arrangements, brought comfort where she could, and even arranged for a priest to visit me. What a fun moment! He came in with a sweet young alter boy, looking slightly nervous; then, he quickly assured me he was there to pray for my healing, not to administer last rites. I laughed. Laughter is medicine too.

When it seemed all was lost, and I would have to be transferred to Oahu for specialist care, a young doctor covering for my primary physician tried an experimental IV treatment that no one else had thought to use. Within hours, my labs began to improve. Ten days after arriving by emergency, I walked out of that hospital and spent the rest of our vacation surrounded by my daughter, her husband, and a sister-in-law who had flown in to be with us. The whales could wait. Family showed up instead.

Be Your Own Best Advocate

Here is something I need to say plainly, because it matters for you as much as it matters for me: I refused to be treated as an ordinary case.

Several doctors wanted to manage my symptoms the way my mother’s were managed in her final years: treating the breathing difficulty without ever asking why. My mother, Dorothy, spent her last years increasingly isolated, her world shrinking around her. Her story is the reason I went back to school after she died. Her story is the reason I earned my PhD in Psychology with a concentration in Gerontology. Her story is, in a very real way, the reason Golden Nuggets for Your Golden Age exists.

I was not going to let her story become mine.

Through a friend who is a pulmonary oncologist at MD Anderson, I found my way to Dr. Michael Foster in Richardson, Texas. His first words won me over completely. He did not ask, “How do we manage this?” He asked, “Why are you still aspirating?” That one question, the right question, eventually uncovered a root cause problem and led to a solution that actually worked.

I now have a team I trust completely and who work together. My primary care physician, my pulmonologist, and an infectious disease specialist, are treating the MAC disease in a way that keeps my liver healthy. My most recent bloodwork came back perfectly normal. We are moving in the right direction.

Every Day Is a Choice

I will be honest with you. There are still hard days. Days when the cough is persistent, when my energy is lower than I want it to be, when I have to make adjustments I would rather not make. Earlier this year I traveled to be with my best friend, who was terminally ill; she passed on April 12th. While visiting her, I became very sick with acute pneumonia. It was miserable. Worst of all, it took a couple of months to recover.

But I want to say this out loud, so you hear it clearly:

This is a speed bump. Not a stop sign.

I have not stopped writing. I have not stopped speaking. I have not stopped building. If anything, this journey has sharpened my sense of purpose until it is almost uncomfortably clear. I know exactly why I do what I do.

Because on that night in a Hawaiian ICU, when my blood pressure was crashing and the right doctor had not yet walked through the door, I kept thinking: there is more I am supposed to do. There are people I am supposed to reach. There are older adults sitting at home right now, believing that the best of their life is behind them, and somebody needs to show them that is simply not true.

That somebody is me. And maybe, together, it is us.

What This Means for You

If you are reading this and you are in your own hard season, maybe it is health, maybe it is loss, maybe it is a life that looks nothing like you planned; I want to offer you what I have clung to:

Ask the right questions. Do not settle for a doctor who only manages symptoms when you deserve someone who wants to know the root cause. Do not settle for a story about yourself that stops short of the truth.

Let people in. Renee was a stranger on a plane until she was not. Grace has a habit of arriving in human form, usually at the exact moment you need it.

Refuse to shrink. Your diagnosis is not your destination. Your difficulty is not your definition. Getting older does not mean getting smaller.

You did not come this far to sit down now.

I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe the reason is ultimately good. And I believe that what I am walking through is meant to help someone else walk through something too, with a little more courage, a little more hope, and the stubborn conviction that the golden years are not a consolation prize.

They are the main event. And you are still in it.

With love and belief in your bold,

Dr. JanMa

Golden Nuggets for Your Golden Age

Don’t just get older — get BOLDER.