This is me y’all. In all my glory. I’m scarred from the belly up. I have been conquering this thing called Marfan syndrome since birth. 

At the age of 25, I’ve been under more times than I would like to count.

I was diagnosed with Marfan syndrome at the age of ten during a visit to the Mayo Clinic on referral from my orthodontist. I’m now in my thirties and working as an attorney in Chicago. Over the last two and a half decades, I’ve learned a lot about navigating life with Marfan Syndrome. These are the top three things I want to share with someone newly diagnosed:

When I came to work for the Foundation in 2016, I was the first full-time employee with Marfan Syndrome. Originally, I worked mostly in the office, then part-time at home, and now I am fully remote as I moved to Kansas City, MO back in April. My transition coincided with the work-from-home movement that was made necessary by COVID-19. Like the Foundation, in a time of social distancing, more and more businesses are learning the value of remote jobs for their employees. While many people thrive working in the office, I have experienced first-hand how working from home has so many benefits, especially if you have a chronic condition. I believe that for those of us with chronic conditions, remote work is so much more than just a job perk. It’s a professional lifeline. How so?  Here are my ten benefits to working remote with a chronic condition:

Keith has never been terribly outgoing. He’s taller than other kids and wears thick glasses. He does not like the glasses. They’ve always bothered him, but now, as he gets a little older and he gets more questions about them from kids his age, he really wishes he could just wear contacts.

Connection is at the core of the Snyder family’s resilience. Through a combination of close family connections and connections to the right medical care at the right time, this family of four is successfully navigating Loeys-Dietz syndrome times 3.