Blue-Eyed Breather

It's the third Thursday of November! It's crazy how fast this month is going. I have 7 new things that I'm thankful for this week. Enjoy :) 1. I'm thankful for the opportunity to participate in clinical trials. I recently got a call to participate in an awesome new Vertex study that has the potential to be an important discovery in the cf world (don't worry, I'll blog on this later). I'm so thankful that I have the time and the ability to participate in these studies and help make a difference in the cf community. 2. I'm thankful for scientists and researchers who have dedicated their lives to cf research. Without them, my life would be significantly different. I know cf isn't where the big bucks are, but I'm so thankful that there are people who are determined to find a cure! 3. I'm thankful for a good night of sleep. Sunday evening, I did not sleep well, and the next day, I was grouchy and struggled to stay awake in classes. I'm s...

There is an emphasis on giving thanks in the month of November. Especially in our chaotic, constantly moving society, it's easy to become distracted with what others have, what we want next, and how we can improve our lives. However, what I love about Thanksgiving (and by extension, the month of November), is how we intentionally stop and count our blessings. We have been given so much. Just our next breath is its own blessing! So, because today is the 12th day of November and the phrase "thankful Thursday" has a nice ring to it, I've made a list of 12 things I'm thankful for for the first edition of November 2015 Thankful Thursday. Stay tuned for more thankful Thursday updates in November! 1. I'm thankful for a new day. I'm thankful I woke up this morning and am ready to make today a great day. I'm thankful that God's mercies are new every morning and that He is with me through the good and bad of every day. 2. I'm thankful for my family. I...

Prepare yourself for a rant...and then a great article. Today, I opened up the CF Roundtable Newsletter. This newsletter is for adults with CF and covers all sorts of different topics that are new and unknown in the CF world. Because people are living longer, CF adults are dealing with issues like GI problems, cancer, work-related stresses, getting married, and having children. This is all pretty new territory when it comes to how to handle adult life with CF because for most of CF history, people with the disease never made it to adulthood. It's incredibly exciting to read this newsletter every few months and see all the great things people with CF are doing. However, one article I read in this fall newsletter absolutely broke my heart and brought me to anger. It's entitled "#MyLifeMatters" and is written by a young woman with CF who has recently been in the fight of her life to receive the new, potentially life-changing drug called Orkambi. This drug is supposed t...

Ahh Friday, how I enjoy you. I don't have classes or practicum on Fridays this semester, so those are my days to rest, recover, and rejuvenate. I'm getting quite used to my three day weekend every weekend. This Friday, I am supposed to be getting my monthly port flush out of the way. However, I have no idea what time the home health nurse will be arriving at my apartment. She called me yesterday to say she had a busy day and would text me about an hour before she arrived, so at least I get a little bit of notice. Yet I feel like I have to stay home all day, waiting for her text. I don't want to be far from my apartment and then have to rush home or stop running errands so I can be back in time, and I need at least 30 minutes to let the numbing cream work before the nurse arrives to access my port. I've been doing homework and went to my apartment's gym to work out, but now, I'm just waiting to get on with my day. Waiting for the text that says she'll be at m...

Hello blogging world! It's been far too long. My fingers have been itching to write again, but I've been so busy lately, my writing has been pushed to the side. Hopefully I can regain a little bit of balance in my life and begin to write again more frequently. So to recap my life: In May, I graduated from Baylor with a degree in communication sciences and disorders--speech pathology, a minor in linguistics, BIC honors credit, and highest academic honors. In August, I started graduate school at the University of Texas at Dallas. UTD has one of the best speech pathology programs in the country, and I am truly blessed to be here. I've learned so much in my last 2 months as a grad student! I love my classes and my practicum experiences, and I'm so excited to see how my journey through grad school unfolds. Unfortunately, this semester my health has been a little rocky. My lungs were doing excellently--my PFTs were stable, I was set to participate in one of the upcoming...

Hi friends! Below is my annual CF letter. I hope you will consider donating to the CF foundation and/or will come out and walk with me at the CF walk! Dear friends and family,                   I hope you all are having a wonderful 2015 so far. It’s hard for me to believe that we’re in the year 2015—so many exciting, life changing things are going on in my world! Since my last letter, my life has been full of plenty of highs and lows. Last May, I completed my junior year of college at Baylor University. I worked Camp Success again over the summer as a reading assistant, which is Baylor’s intensive language and literacy camp for kids. This was my second summer working camp, and it was an amazing experience. I loved getting to work with kids to help improve their reading and writing skills, and I enjoyed getting to learn lots of new things. However, after Camp Success ended in June, I had to have a...

Hello Internet world! Sorry for the long hiatus from blogging. Life has been a bit crazy for me, finishing up my last semester at Baylor and all. I'm in a bit of denial that I'm going to be a graduate of Baylor University in about a month and a half. It seems like yesterday I was a freshman, still unsure of what I wanted to do with my life or who I wanted to become. And yet here I am, a twenty-two year old woman, confident in the direction my life is going and trusting God to lead me every step of the way. Wow, these four years have gone by fast. I'm not finished with school when I graduate, however. I am going to get my Master's of Science in Speech Pathology at the University of Texas at Dallas. I start grad school in August, and I am so excited to actually put my textbook knowledge to good use and learn the practicalities of speech path!  When I was trying to decide which grad school to attend, I honestly struggled more than I expected. When I was in high school and ...

"When someone is going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million empty words." Can anyone else relate to the quote above? I know I can. In the midst of some of my deepest, darkest storms, I have not been comforted with flowery words that I know have little substance behind them. No, what comforts me most when words seem inadequate is the still, quiet presence of other people beside me. It's those people, the ones that choose to stick by my side when life has never seemed so dark, who I know care deeply for me. I was reading Job 1-2 in the Bible today. In those chapters, Satan came to the Lord and asked permission to harm Job emotionally and then physically to try and get him to sin. The Lord grants permission but refuses to allow Satan to kill Job. Satan destroys his livestock and his children and covered Job in painful sores all over his body. And yet, he did not sin against God; he maintained his integrity. Towards the end of Job 2, his thr...

I stumbled across this blog post today, and I felt like I needed to share it. To the mommas (and daddys) of chronically ill children, thank you.  By Lexi (link below) To the Momma of a Chronically and Critically Ill Child, I’ve seen you in those hospital rooms. I’ve seen you hand your child off to surgeons, not knowing if you would ever get to hold them again with a beating heart. I’ve seen you pray, hope, and hold on to faith with a sheer will that would put most to shame. I’ve seen you hold your babies with tears streaming down your face because this kind of sickness isn’t the kind that just comes and goes, this is the kind where no one can assure you that your child is going to be okay. You are brave. You are strong. You are loving. You fight for your children when they can’t fight for themselves. You hope for them and you stay positive for them, and then run to the bathroom just to cry in the stall where they can’t see. You research and talk to doctors and talk to other parents...

The first week of my last semester is finished. I know I've said this a lot, but boy, time flies!! I was thinking today about how I came to declare my major--speech pathology. It's been a crazy ride, but I wouldn't changed a second of it. Care to join me on a walk down memory lane?  When I was a freshman, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. My major was literally undecided. There were too many things I enjoyed and too many subjects I loved learning. In high school, I did well in all my classes; there wasn't really one subject I liked more than the rest. Learning in general came easily to me. My first semester of freshman year I went to career counseling to try and get some guidance of how my personality and my interests could possibly turn into a career path. I got many different possible options, but for some reason, speech pathology stood out to me. I had no idea what a speech pathologist actually did, but I started googling it that night. I found out that...

My biggest pet peeve is probably when someone says they understand the pain or frustrations or problems I'm having in life. Naturally, people want to be empathetic. They want to identify with another however they can, and sometimes the words, "I understand" just spill out. I know I've been guilty of that before. But truly, when someone uses those two words in an utterance, I cringe on the inside.  Two weeks ago, I was scheduled to have a pulmonary embolization. I got to the hospital at 12:00pm for what I thought was supposed to be a 1:00pm surgery. However, after I registered for my surgery and was sent to imaging, the nurse told me that in their system, I was scheduled for a CT scan to check for a blood clot--the exact opposite of the problem I was having with lung bleeds. Now, needless to say, I was not a happy camper. I hadn't eaten or had anything to drink since 10pm the previous night. I was weak and tired. I was nervous about having to have the procedure. An...

If you've ever kept up with college football, you've probably heard of the Cotton Bowl. It's definitely one of the best bowl games played at the end of the season, especially for a Texas team, playing on our turf and defending our territory. Baylor had the opportunity to represent the Big 12 as the number 5 team in the nation in the Cotton Bowl today against the number 8 team, Michigan State. I was able to attend the game in Dallas at Jerry World (aka AT&T Stadium), and boy, was it an experience! For starters, the stadium is huge, and I've never seen a jumbotron that ginormous before. Both the Baylor and Michigan State crowds represented well in numbers. I was surrounded by thousands of crazy, screaming football fans, and I loved it.  Baylor played great. Our offense showed up big time. Bryce Petty threw some amazing passes and set Cotton Bowl records left and right. KD Cannon set a record for most receiving yards for a true freshman. Our defense had some great ...