From the Blog

A Medical Look at a Regular Day

BoredToday, I just got fed up with all of these nebulizer treatments, but I did them anyway. I’ve been thinking about portraying what a normal day in my life looks like since I “get to stay home and hope people send me money,” which is an old line Beautiful used to say when I was just starting the home business. It’s a bit more than that now, but I suppose it still rings somewhat true, only further into the future rather than hoping they send money that day.

I looked up at the DVR machine this morning and it was 10:12am. I had made Beautiful’s lunch and made my omelet to down my huge breakfast and sent her out the door packing around 7am. After taking care of client work that didn’t get done last night when I passed out on the couch from a long day’s work, I started my nebs.

Everything is pretty organized now, so it is just a matter of making a stop at the fridge, the counter, and opening a cabinet door and coming back to the couch. This month, I’m on everything, so my routine includes Albuterol, Pulmozyme, Cayston, Colistin, and 7% saline. It’s a heck of a run, but I am ever so thankful that I don’t have a compressor and can do them all in my Trio and Altera in about 15-20 minutes if I don’t get distracted when one finishes. It’s really easy to put the neb down and just keep working in my line of work. If it weren’t for that technology, I’d be staring at 2.5 hours of nebs twice a day and an hour at another time and I would surely not be as compliant as I am.

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Fatboy Is Not a Victim of Cystic Fibrosis

September 2003At the risk of sounding like an over-priced self-improvement guru, I’ve got to nail home to the CF community and the world that CF is no longer the disease it once was. I will not be held back from any of my dreams other than beating John Elway in a quarterback contest and being an ace fighter pilot. I’ll let those to pass by on account of my size, anyway.

I’ve done a lot of surfing today to find new CFer blogs to add to my new color-coded blogroll. I found a lot of happy-go-lucky attitudes. I found a lot of misery. I found a lot of despair.

What I found the most of all was hope.

Hope of a better life than our collective CFer parents were told when we were born. I want you to watch this. All of it. This is your life, too.

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Fatboy’s Great Personal Biogtry: Smokers

SmokieYou know exactly what I’m talking about with this one. You’re sitting in a room and chimney comes and sits next to you. You’re trying to rush into a public building but have to first navigate an illegal gauntlet of smokers lining the sidewalks and entryway.

It’s days like these that probably make it a good thing for my safety that I topped off at 5′ 4″ and have no intention of really exercising any of the razorback that wants to come out and play with those smokers’ ankles.

I seem to be completely incapable of separating someone’s infinite other qualities once I know they are a smoker, let alone a chain smoker who has a smoker’s cough as a result of years of abuse. Colleagues: get away and send me an e-mail, but your IQ has dropped 45 points in my book. Family: I know you not, for you are too stupid to have come from the same spawn as I.

Can there be anything more unfair in place?

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Hiccups: the New Dreaded Symptom

The last two weeks have been ridiculous with the hiccups. Previously, only two things would make me hiccup:

  • turkey dinner
  • chicken breast

Now, it’s everything and at all times of the day and evening, regardless of eating, wanting to eat, or having eaten my fill. It’s not only moderately embarrassing, but these hiccups are painful, full-force half-pukes rather than annoying little hic, hic, hics. The worst when when they come in waves of hic, hic, hics, but with their full force.

Miserable!

I think we can trace the symptoms back to the increase in taking Megace in accordance to my prescribed amount, so it’s unknown whether it’s the amount of medicine itself or the effects of eating so much. I’ve gained 12 lbs in the last 2 weeks, for crying out loud. I look like a distended blockage boy every evening clear until bedtime, only to wake up normal and start over again.

As soon as I hit 135, which is the weight the doctor put on my “report card” from clinic, I’m cutting back on this weight gain craziness and see if I can maintain my weight with 1 Tbsp of Megace per day and eat more like I used to, because the constant danger of losing what I just ate is really freaking me out.

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