Blue-Eyed Breather

Today, Novartis and the Boomer Esiason Foundation sponsored a webcast about CF patients planning for college and beyond. (If you would like to watch it, the webcast will be uploaded on the Boomer Esiason website in a few weeks). More CF patients are going to college, getting married, getting a job, and living into retirement. Because of this, CF patients need to think about the future and know how to balance CF with the craziness of life. There were three people who spoke on the webcast--Gunnar Esiason, who just graduated from Boston College, Ginny, a mother of two daughters with CF, and a CF social worker.  It's encouraging to see these people managing CF with college and "grown-up life".  Because CF patients don't have much face-to-face contact, it's difficult to know how other CF patients are managing everything we must deal with.  I loved several points said on the video. Gunnar, Ginny, and the social worker all stressed the importance of having strong soc...

Sorry blogging followers, my blog reposted two old posts (Unknown Future and Diving into Science). If you follow me via email, you may receive an email saying I wrote a new post. Those aren't new! Lesson learned--I shouldn't mess with my blog when I don't know what I'm doing. :)

I am finally deaccessed (again) and finished with this course of IV antibiotics (again)!!!!!!! Hallelujah. I've been on IVs for almost seven weeks of the summer, which has seemed like forever. Maybe I can actually have a real summer vacation now, complete with swimming, enjoying the outdoors, and sleeping through the night?! We'll see. I know the IVs keep me as healthy as possible, and my lungs need all the help they can get, but I am SO ready to have a break from IVs for (hopefully) a few months! Tata for now. I'm off to enjoy my freedom. :)

Hey blogging world! Four times a year, I receive the newest edition of the CF Roundtable , which is a newsletter for adults with CF. The newsletter always focuses on a different topic, such as GI issues, lung transplants, or living through pain. This time, the topic was on motivation and what keeps CFers going through the good times and the bad. Let me tell you, the CF community is full of some very wise people. Even though I haven't met a single person who wrote an article for the newsletter, I loved reading about what inspires them to stay positive and healthy. This is my own response to the edition's latest question: "What keeps you motivated?" 1. My family. They put their lives on hold for me when I am feeling sick. They keep me determined to fight illness with unending encouragement. They refuse to let me stay a single night in the hospital by myself, knowing that someone needs to keep an extra eye on things. They push me to succeed in everything I do. Even i...

Today, the 2013 Ingram family staycation begins. What is a staycation, you may ask? Great question. A staycation is when you stay home for vacation; bet you didn't guess that! My family was supposed to go to Gulf Shores for a fun beach vacation. However, after my little bout of sickness and now round of IV antibiotics, the beach would be pretty miserable for me because I can't get my accessed site wet. So instead, we are staying home and doing Austin things like going bowling, eating downtown, going to the Alamo Drafthouse, and watching the bats. It'll be a different kind of vacation, but we Ingrams make the best of any and all situations!  Let the staycation begin.

I haven't written a thankful Thursday blog in a very long time, but what better day to write it than on America's birthday?? So, here it goes: 1. I'm thankful for my country. I'm thankful for the opportunities America gives its citizens. I'm thankful for the freedoms guaranteed by our government. I'm thankful for Americans' desire to excel and improve others' quality of life. I'm thankful for American traditions and beliefs. We certainly don't live in a perfect country; our government is run by people, and all people are flawed, so there's no way it could ever be perfect. But I can say with certainty that I'm proud to be an American! 2. I'm thankful for sunshine and temperatures under 100 in July. The weather the past few days has been amazing. In Texas, a week of less than 100 degree temperatures in the middle of the summer is almost unheard of, yet we've had record lows this week. I'm so thankful for the beautiful we...

Wow, what a week. Last Tuesday, I went to the doctor. My lungs weren't doing well, and I was having a pretty severe pain in my right middle lobe area. The appointment went in a completely unexpected direction. My doctor wanted to do a bronchoscopy Thursday to see if we were missing anything down in my lungs. Although a bronchoscopy is not an invasive surgery, I still had to have anesthesia and miss Thursday and Friday of work. My doctor also wanted me to follow the bronch up with three weeks of IV antibiotics, even though I just finished a course of antibiotics about a month ago. I was strongly opposed to missing work, but I still had the bronch Thursday and started IVs. The bronchoscopy went fine. My doctor took several sputum cultures from different areas of my lungs so if any new bacteria is invading them, we'll be able to see soon. The anesthesia from the surgery wiped me out--I had absolutely no energy Thursday through Sunday. I'm not sure if I've ever slept as muc...