Keeping Up With Health

As many CFers know, and the loved ones around us, some of our medication can be quite the time suck. The Vest treatment alone takes 20 minutes minimum. Well I have been lucky enough to have wonderful doctors who understand how busy of a lady I am. They have worked to find alternative treatments that not only make me healthy, but are also efficient. I am so thankful that my doctors are so committed to me that they would take the extra time to research all these different alternatives. Most people may say that that is just their job, but it’s not. They don’t have to take time out of their lives to save me time in my daily life; they just have to make me healthy. Good doctors make sure that in addition to being healthy, you are able to live your life as fully as you would like. That would be what I am most grateful for when it comes to my “doctor” care. It was also really helpful to have a friend with CF to talk to about different medications and treatment options. While there is news and information on the web, it’s always nice to have a friend who can give you personal experience with a medication. That’s how I found out about the Tobipodhaler; this saves me almost 20 minutes each treatment! The nebulized Tobi took about 20 minutes and the Tobipodhaler only takes about 5 minutes. Another important aspect of living with treatments that take up a bunch of time is creativity and structure! It has taken me years of trial and error to figure out my schedule, but I have finally found a treatment schedule that works with my schedule and the only thing I had to sacrifice was waking up “late”. Although let’s be honest, that’s just part of growing up. Haha. Something important that I have had to learn is how to ask for help. I have also learned that the people I love actually enjoy helping me do my medicine. This is just crazy for me to think of because I hate doing it and it just feels like a burden! So in order to stay sane with the amount of maintenance my lungs need, my wonderful boyfriend has taken on a couple of responsibilities. He gets to wash my loads of nebulizer cups every morning and fill my pill container with my array of pills every week. While this may seem like a small couple of tasks, it saves me about half an hour every morning.

So here is my creative schedules for my treatments that I have come up with! This is how I am able to do all of the things that I want, live my life like a normal college student, and still stay healthy.

**Keep in mind that these treatments and times are when I am healthy. When I am sick they take much longer, and I usually have to do more treatments in a day**

I just wanted to take a moment to describe the maintenance that comes with having a chronic condition. Juggling school, work, and my health has been something that I have struggled with my whole life. When I was a kid all I wanted to do was sleep in and play with my friends after school. However, I would have to wake up early to fit in my morning treatment and come home right after school to do my afternoon treatment. In the evenings I would either have to miss activities or come home early. It was always really frustrating for me because I am such a social individual. When I went off to college this got a million times more difficult. There was more school, more work, and many more friends. I also didn’t have my parents looking after me to make sure that I did my medicine twice a day (I was lucky enough to get my treatments cut down from 3x a day to 2x a day some time during high school or middle school). This is my 5th year of college and I feel like I am still trying to figure out this balancing act. I am so close to figuring it out, though, and I am not even close to giving up. For the longest time, the hardest treatment for me to fit in was the morning one. This was because I was chronically waking up 5 minutes before I had to leave for class; Not because of my CF, but because this is just how college kids/young adults are. Well, some time in the last couple of years I have finally outgrown that. Except then the evening treatment started giving me issues because I either worked until 2 or 3 in the morning and just wanted to go to bed after work, or because I would fall asleep on the couch working on homework.