Instagram influencer Miroslava Duma reveals battle with rare lung disease
34-year-old revealed the news in a lengthy Instagram post
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Your support makes all the difference.Miroslava Duma has announced that she has been battling a rare lung disease.
The Russian fashion influencer revealed the news in a lengthy Instagram post on Sunday, in which she wrote that she was diagnosed with a rare lung disease earlier in the year and was given just months to live.
“Earlier this year I was diagnosed with a rare lung disease, and given 7 months to live,” Duma wrote alongside a photograph of herself smiling.
“It was crazy scary then, but looking back, I realise that the past few months of recovery were possibly the happiest months of my entire life.”
It is unclear if Duma is still battling the disease and when exactly she was diagnosed, however, the 34-year-old said that the diagnosis has changed her perspective on life and what is most important to her.
“I suddenly stopped running the marathon and realised how much I love life, how beautiful our world is and how much I want to stay here – with the people I love,” Duma wrote.
“For the first time in my life, I saw the bright blue of skies. And the beautiful green of trees. As if I had lived on a different planet before. I wake up happy, just because I can spend one more day here.”
The mother-of-three added that she has shifted her mentality and is no longer concerned about external validation.
“My entire life I was seeking approval and obsessing over ‘likes’ both in physical and virtual worlds, without realising that I actually had to learn how to ‘like’ myself first,” she explained.
“Success to me today is not measured by external indicators anymore, but by what’s inside. It is measured by my own health, and the health of those I love.
"It is measured by how I choose to contribute to the world.”
Duma concluded the post by thanking the “wonderful people” in her life,” jokingly adding, “I love you with all of my heart (and my lungs).”
This announcement may come as a surprise to Duma’s followers on social media as the businesswoman has still been posting images from holidays, of moments with her children, and pictures relating to her sustainable fashion company, Future Tech Lab.
Duma first became well known in the fashion industry during the early 2000s when she was regularly photographed at New York and Paris Fashion Week.
Throughout her career, she has served as project director at Harper’s Bazaar and has done freelance work for the Russian versions of Vogue, Forbes Woman and Glamour magazine.
In 2011, Duma also founded Buro 24/7 a website for art, film, fashion and music.
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