Keeping Busy & Staying Healthy!

The past couple of weeks have been busy, but very good. We have been able to cross off a few more items on our summer "to-do" list. I celebrated my 23rd birthday, Tim and I visited his sister Katrina who lives near St. Louis, summer school ended, we finally painted the last room in our house/apartment, and we went to Starved Rock. We didn't do too much for my birthday this year, which was fine with me. Tim bought me a hammock for the yard (which we have yet to get out there) and we went to dinner with a couple of friends. A few days later we were headed down to southern Illinois to visit Tim's sister, Katrina. While we were there for the weekend, we all went to the St. Louis zoo and on the Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour.
There was also lots of baby talk (which I'm sure Tim loved) because in a couple weeks Katrina will be finding out if she's having a boy or a girl! Personally, I'm thinking a girl, but we'll see.... Summer school ended last week on Thursday, so now I have more free time to do who knows what. I still have my Spanish class Monday-Thursday afternoons, but that's it. I found a few empty collage picture frames in our basement, so my goal is to get those filled, hopefully with some honeymoon pictures. Now that we finally have our last room painted, as of Saturday, I want to get the walls filled with pictures and things to make it feel more homey. I love the way all of our rooms have turned out with the paint, so I'm excited to get some more decorating done - that's the fun part for me.

Inside a canyon - click on the picture
to enlarge it.

Yesterday, Tim and I met our friends Amanda and Neil, and their friend Eric at Starved Rock to go hiking. Of course it was about 90 degrees, 95% humidity and a heat index of about 102, but we survived! For those of you who don't know, I hate hot weather. My ideal day is about 75 degrees, so this 95 degrees with lots of humidity is definitely not my thing! But I love going to Starved Rock because it's not too far from where we live and it's beautiful (we actually considered getting married there, but for some reason decided against it - probably too expensive). It's fun to hike through the trails and see the different cliffs and canyons. Luckily for us yesterday, there is a lot of shade there. I packed a water bottle and bought a Gatorade for myself and brought lots of snacks to stay hydrated and to keep replenishing body's salt. (Click here to read about why salt is so important for CF patients.) We also decided to start our hike in the morning, hoping that we'd get out of there before it got too hot. We probably hiked for a good three hours and went about 6 or 7 miles, we think. It was fun, even if we were all soaked with sweat. It was great to catch up and hang out with friends without having to spend any money! (Except for lunch afterwards).

Looking out over "Lover's Leap" at
Starved Rock

I'm so glad to be keeping busy this summer, even though during the week I have a lot of down time. Tim's finally working regular hours now, so that makes planning things so much better! We have lots of family things coming up over the next few weeks, so that will be keeping us busy. This weekend I'll be heading to Wisconsin with one of my awesome friends for a four day country concert event which I am VERY excited about!
And even with keeping as busy as I am, I've been feeling really good! I've been trying really hard to keep up a routine to make sure that I get in both sets of treatments each day (much easier said than done) and I plan on lugging all of my equipment up to Wisconsin with me this weekend. I have definitely learned that I need to get over the embarrassment and awkwardness of doing my treatments in front of other people. For example, when Tim and I (or just me) go out of town for a weekend or more, I never used to bring my treatments with me because it is a lot to bring, but I also didn't like doing my treatments in front of other people. I guess I was just afraid that they would judge me or look at me differently because in the back of their mind, they knew I had CF, but now that they are seeing all of the treatments I had to do, it was a reality to them. (Obviously, no one has ever said this to me - this is just what goes through my head.) I've learned that people understand that I need to do my treatments, even if they may not know exactly why it's so important, so I just need to suck it up and do them. I'm getting to the point in my health, where I can feel a difference with my lungs if I miss several treatments in a row, so I know that it's very important that I keep up with everything, even if that means lugging everything around. When I do go to Wisconsin this weekend, here's a list of everything I'll need to bring (just for my treatments).
- Vest machine (plus it's bag, both tubes, power cord, and the actual vest.)
- Nebulizer machine (plus the tube)
- Three nebulizer cups and all of their parts
- Eflow machine (and power cord) for TOBI
- Eflow nebulizer cup with all of the parts (and a cup of alcohol to soak the filter piece)
- 8 Albuterol vials
- 4 Hypertonic Saline vials
- 4 Pulmzyme vials
- 8 TOBI vials
- Cooler to keep Pulmozyme and TOBI cold
- Bag or something to carry all of it in
- Bottle of enzymes and weekly vitamin organizer (not for breathing treatments, but I wouldn't be able to eat anything without my enzymes and I'd feel like crap without my vitamins)

So on top of whatever you would have to pack for a four or five day trip plus everything above, and I think I'll be good to go! Good thing I have lots of space in my car! Hope there's space at Karissa's family cottage for me and all of my belongings!!
This post got to be a lot longer than I thought it was going to be originally, but I like to tie in my CF whenever I can and here it just kept going....Here are a couple pictures with Katrina's dogs Champ (yellow) and Oscar (black) with me while I was doing my treatments down at her house last weekend. They don't judge! :)