\u201cI had, at this point, gotten kind of dismissive about it because I had been dismissed by so many doctors as, \u2018There\u2019s nothing wrong, you\u2019re not responding to our treatments, we\u2019ll try something else,\u2019\u201d Silverman recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But one person refused to dismiss her: a nurse practitioner named Alison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alison worked at one of the clinics Silverman visited regularly, and unlike the doctors who had cycled through various unsuccessful treatments, Alison kept paying attention. She was perplexed by the cough and made it her mission to track Silverman\u2019s condition over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During one of Silverman\u2019s weekly appointments, Alison noticed something concerning. Silverman\u2019s symptoms had gotten worse. Her voice was hoarse, she was breathless and wheezing, and the coughing was more severe than before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe was just adamant something was wrong with my airway,\u201d Silverman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alison immediately pushed one of the physicians at the clinic to perform a scope of Silverman\u2019s trachea. The procedure involved inserting a small camera through her nose and down the back of her throat to look for blockages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI could just tell by their faces something was not right,\u201d Silverman remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scope revealed what years of doctor visits had missed. Silverman had idiopathic subglottic stenosis, a rare condition that affects about one in 400,000 people. Scar tissue had been building up at the top of her trachea, and her airway was 75% blocked. That\u2019s why she\u2019d been coughing. That\u2019s why nothing had worked. And if it had gone untreated much longer, it would have been fatal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a very serious condition and fatal if not treated because your airway completely closes,\u201d Silverman explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The diagnosis finally gave Silverman what she needed: the right information to find the right specialist who could actually treat her condition. She\u2019s now doing well, spending her time volunteering at her local hospital, riding her bike, hiking, skiing, and enjoying time with friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But she hasn\u2019t forgotten what Alison did for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHad Alison not picked up on the fact that she was sure something else was wrong and gotten this physician to look in my throat, I don\u2019t know what would have happened,\u201d Silverman said. \u201cIt was her persistence and diligence and her listening to me and taking me seriously that got my diagnosis in a timely enough fashion to do something about it. So, for these reasons, Alison is my unsung hero.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our healthcare system is increasingly driven by rapid diagnoses and technology, but sometimes what saves a life is just simple human attention. Someone who listens, keeps watching, and refuses to dismiss what they\u2019re seeing even when everyone else has moved on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cHad Alison not picked up on the fact that she was sure something else was wrong, I don\u2019t know what would have happened.\u201d Julie Silverman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/688996074_1450880333739620_6043544888467425098_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8266,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263\/revisions\/8266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"nurse,](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Nurse-final.png?w=1024\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n