Relationships — Page 6

Seriously, Just a Quick Update

March 1, 2011

There hasn’t been too much to write about lately, other than the possibility of another sinus surgery (we’ll know Friday), and a lot of work stuff that will bore the heck out of 95% of you. The main reason apart from my busy-ness is that our minds are way too full being pre-occupied with some major life choices that we aren’t ready to put out on open airwaves. I’m ready, but it’s something we both need to be okay discussing – I always run the more personal topics by Beautiful, just in case it’s personal to her.

This is one of those topics. Of course, saying we have something to talk about without talking about it is highly annoying, so to appease a lot of curiosity, here are some things it’s NOT:

relationship trouble
health trouble
legal trouble
trouble of any kind
pregnancy
death
moving
work-related

It’s actually a very cool thing that we are both very excited about and very freaked out about at this stage. I’m fairly certain we will be ready to talk about it in the next few weeks, but I could be wrong. Please, no guessing, just know that you’ll be in on the whole thing once we decide to discuss it and that you can discuss it on both of our sites because we won’t be able to stop talking about it.

Your support means more than you know, which is why I’m giving you a non-update rather than ignoring the strange elephant in the room that no one can see.

Cystic Fibrosis and Divorce

February 9, 2011

Despite having cystic fibrosis, I live a charmed life. My fibros with their wonderful women by their sides know exactly what I’m talking about. As a kid, I had no concept that I would be a less-than-desirable partner when I grew up. As a teen, it started to become more evident that I wasn’t like the guys who had girls hanging off their arms, soon followed by the realization that CFers have the deck stacked against them when it comes to finding work that can support a family. Our wedding day was, without a doubt, my happiest day of my life – but the story doesn’t end there for couples, does it?

Divorce is rampant with rates around 50% for decades now and having a child born with CF sends those odds through the roof, certainly in the 60s and 70s when CFers were dying by the time they were 12, almost without exception. Money fights are still the biggest cause of divorce in America, and having a CFer will almost certainly put financial strain into all but the richest’s relationships. So…

A new era arrives

What happens when CFers start getting married? [Read more…]

A Season for Everything

February 1, 2011

I’ve had many seasons in my life, but they just seem to come faster and faster. What I’m not sure of is whether it’s just a perception that comes with having more years’ experience and time speeds up or if it’s because we are causing so many changes. Since we have such a broad audience of CFers, family of CFers, and friends and those generally interested in things we experience, this is a topic for all of us.

I remember when our 9-week grade cards took forever and a day to come around in elementary school. Then in high school, things started to revolve more around semesters, but we still had the 9-week crutch to break things up. I was in and out of college so many semesters, that whole thing is a mess to me, but I can tell you that my last year of college (31 credit hours) was both the longest and shortest year of my life! That speed has only been surpassed by the months that have gone blazing by since. We’ve been to Tennessee for a week, Ohio for a weekend, and nearly tripled the work that comes across my path for work since graduation.

Where does the time go?

All of this speeding up has me concerned about how much time we all have left. [Read more…]

Figuring Stuff Out

January 15, 2011

I’ve had a lot on my mind since Sunday thinking about how CF has affected my life. It’s undeniable that it has touched every area possible: personality, geographic location, health, faith, status, and career. All in all, it’s been a very good week of mulling over these thoughts for such a profound amount of time compared to fleeting thoughts that bombard me every hour. Here’s what I’ve come up with this week.

Personality

I’m not quite clear what sort of person I’d be if I wasn’t kept in check with my own “thorn in the flesh” that places limits and constant reminders of them into my daily routine. I have a suspicion that I’d be a pompous, overly confident piece of work. Even as it is now, I swing wildly from being a cocky, self-centered jerk all the way to being a depressing, insecure weirdo. [Read more…]