If you’ve been keeping up recently (I know, I’ve been awesome and posting something new every day for a while now) with this week’s happenings, Beautiful and I went on an out-of-state family vacation to a big cabin outside of Gatlinburg, TN. It’s been GREAT, but it wasn’t without its planning and accomodating for me and my dietary needs.

Since I didn’t have CF before March (wink, wink), we never did much to do anything special for me other than just accept that I was going to order more food and request that we eat earlier and more often than anyone. Before this site, even they didn’t understand the full effects that food has on my health, to no fault of their own. I hid it because I always want to be normal.

This time was different! We had extra portions for me, extra sides, we brought a ton of Boost Plus, and I was completely unashamed to finish others’ portions, like how I practically ate two full meals at Pappadeaux tonight before going to the baseball game. “Beasting it up” became the badge of honor, as was “being a champ” for either first done, most eaten, and sometimes both.

I didn’t quite hit my 130lb goal for vacation, but there’s no way in the world that I’m disappointed with these results.

It seems foolish of me – borderline selfish – to have spent over $3,000 in the last year to finish my college education when we had other pressing medical financial issues to deal with. Now that it’s done, I don’t regret it because I can see the rewards for all of that hard work “paying off” now and I can count those feelings that we should have gone about things differently as inconsequential.

There is a power in undivided attention to one task. Of course, I don’t just have one task since eating is still a full-time job and I can never stop being a husband, but at least I don’t have to decide whether to run my business or do school now.

Last year, business was doing great until late in the Fall semester when I was full-bore school. We were limping along, but I was determined to finish in May without having wasted the Spring semester tuition just to try to increase revenue – that would have been a double penalty in the end: paying tuition twice and dragging out the courses to graduate.

Don’t give up

If I had a dollar for every time in the last 10 years that I wanted to give up on getting my college degree, I wouldn’t need to work. Conversely, if I had a dollar for every time I kicked myself for not finishing at any point after 2001, my descendants would never have to work. I am my own toughest critic. I can’t count on both hands and feet the number of evenings and late, late, late nights I was either working on homework or trying to get business done after being at school all day in the last 9 months. Those times were hard. “Is a degree worth this?” “How badly do I want this?”

There are winners and losers of every walk and health status, so these questions are not a CF thing. Piper Beatty has a law degree. Then there are dudes with 30 piercings, goth makeup, and mom in tow – at adult clinic, probably to be sure he went. There are times that things at the moment can be so bad that you don’t know if taking the next step to get to the end goal is worth it. What’s one more aerosol when you take four? What’s one more class when you have 20 to go? What are 5 more FEV percentage points when you’re all the way down at 35%? Sandy is getting pretty frustrated now, thinking that her niece doesn’t remember her when she wasn’t always sick. I’ll see what I can do to help you all from my experiences.

Fatboy’s tips on personal success

Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing. [Read more…]