CF Awareness Month Blogs #15 &16

These two kind of go together and there's not much that I can think of to say about either, so I'll try my best!

I know that when I was in high school and college I would skip treatments all the time because I was "too tired." Now that I'm working on 100% compliance (almost 2 years straight), I've done my treatments all crazy times of the night, especially when we're out of town. I know I've fallen asleep while doing treatments before. I've forgotten to take my enzymes before meals. Or, I'll take my enzymes, then half way through the meal I think, "Oh crap, did I take my enzymes??" So then I usually just take a couple more to be sure!

I remember one time when I was little, UPS or FedEx was on strike, so when my mom called to refill my enzymes they took longer than expected to arrive. I remember I didn't have my enzymes for about a day or two, so I remember just having to eat fruit & pretzels (easy things to digest) until they came. Looking back, there had to be someway to get them from a local pharmacy to cover that day, but oh well...

When I was in middle school, my family's insurance got chanced for some reason, so I had to go see a new CF doctor. I was not happy because I was in my rebellious stage and I was "going to see someone who knew nothing about me". At every CF doctor appointment, I have to give a sputum sample (mucus) to see what bacteria my lungs are culturing. When I was younger and not doing treatments, it was very difficult for me to cough up any mucus to give a good sample, so they would have to do a throat culture - where they stick a giant Q-tip thing down your throat to make you gag (lovely). Well this new doctor did a throat culture on me and scratch the back of my throat pretty hard with the thing and I remember being so angry at her!! Thankfully, I didn't have to see her too much and our insurance went back to normal so I could go back to my regular Peds doctor "who wouldn't hurt me" in my adolescent mind! ;)