Cystic Fibrosis Fatboy — Page 24 — The daily quest to gain weight

What Doesn’t Break You Only Makes You Stronger

July 23, 2011

I’ll see if I can get through this post without grabbing a Kleenex, so start your engines. My little buddy, Kaleb, has been having a heckuva time lately with infections and now he’s landed in the hospital with lung/blood infections, walking pneumonia, and more. On top of that, he’s got to have his port removed and placed on the other side due to one of the infections involving his port.

I’m a tough guy, but I’m also a softie once you get to know me or I get to know you, so when I read about the little ones going through what we go through, I don’t know why, but I feel like taking it for them.

Then I realize how stupid of a statement that is – given my position – I’ve got the same thing, only different!

I must be mental to want to take his place with those procedures, meds, pokes, and more likely than not guessing on the part of the medical staff. It has to be the “dad genes” kicking in now that we’re almost foster parents or something. A part of it is probably that I’ve been through so much, I know I can take it…

Here’s what I want you to do. Today. Sunday. Monday at the latest. Leave them a comment on their blog, or a comment here (they read and I believe they get e-mail notices of new posts. To go above and beyond, you can send him or his family something for this week in the hospital. He’s got at least 8 more days to go before he’s allowed to go home. They’ve made a list, so let’s show them some love. His mom made a list:

Kaleb likes Transformers, Dolphin or Orca Pillow Pet, Transforming Perry the Platypus Plush at Toys R Us, Phineas and Ferb THE MOVIE (Toys R US), Plush Angry bird (he only has a yellow one)
Gift cards/$ for/to Walmart, Target, Olive Garden, Pei Wei, PF Changs, Starbucks, QT, Wendy’s (any food)

Kaleb, your card is in the mail, so here’s a little something something extra for today:

Stuffy Ears and Fears of Allergies

July 18, 2011

Gray's Anatomy plate - Wikipedia.org

For several weeks now I have been experiencing uncomfortable swelling inside my right ear canal. Just my right ear. Just near the earlobe – shallow enough to touch with my pinkie. I put up with it for days before I realized it was following any sort of pattern.

I always felt it in the evening: after dinner and/or nebs, because sometime it waited until we were watching TV and sometimes it was nearly during dinner. Then I’d get it after lunch or mid-morning. The real tipping point for me was when it happened doing my nebs in the morning before I’d eaten or had anything to drink.

I mentioned it on Facebook and everyone suggested I see my doctor. We mulled over options here and decided to cut out Hot Pockets – my most recent high-calorie food addiction – what is “imitation mozzarella” anyway? That didn’t do anything but make my lunches take 5x longer to heat up. Same symptoms. It didn’t make sense to be an allergy to my food anyway. Who’s ever had a one-sided allergy in their ear from ingestion?

Friday morning I’d had enough

I called my PCP to see if he had changed his hours and was open on Fridays. He was and he could see me in an hour. I downed my breakfast and hit the road.

As far as family practice doctors go, he’s fantastic. What he doesn’t know about CF he more than makes up with general weird things [Read more…]

Join Us on Social Networks Like Google Plus

July 13, 2011

Many of us have found each other through social networks, usually our blogs’ blogrolls in the sidebars. But many of us are also carrying on daily conversations on the major social networks.

I wanted to put together a place where we can post our social network IDs or URLs. Mine are and have been in the sidebar and header, but here they are in easy format.

http://twitter.com/cffatboy
Follow @cffatboy

https://www.facebook.com/cffatboy (yes, always use https!)
https://plus.google.com/114766171607995059456 (Google +)

Please leave your information in the comments so others can follow you and we can all have big parties.

Google +

The newest social network is Google +. It just opened up its doors by invitation last Tuesday, and I got in on Friday. Rather than creating lists and groups that you try to keep track of what permissions they all have (like on Facebook) or broadcasting to everyone without any group control at all (like Twitter), Google + has the best of both worlds: circles.

You create circles of people, such as family, friends, acquaintances, people you think sat behind you in class, etc. Then, each time you post something, you have the option of which circles to broadcast to, or “public” or “extended circles” of your circles’ circles. Pretty neat feature.

You can also edit both posts and comments later AND easily mute a conversation that you comment on and it just never ends. I’ve got a Chrome plugin so I even turned off all e-mail notifications.

My one gripe is that the stream shows all of your circles, but I have some very noisy friends. The work-around is to create a circle of those you want to see their posts (call it “stream” if you want to be really wild and crazy) and put most of your people in that circle, but leave out the noisy ones. You’re still following them and can see them by going to their circle, but your daily stream isn’t taken over by their “junk.”

If you need an invite to Google +, DM me your Gmail address in Twitter after I follow you back.

Life Goals – How Foster Parenting Fits In

July 5, 2011

This entry is part [part not set] of 2 in the series Cystic Fibrosis and Foster Care

If you would have asked me a year ago if I thought we’d become foster parents, I’d have said that there wasn’t any chance. We were definitely thinking we’d be adopting or even possibly wondering if we’d ever have kids since we were both working so hard and not really excelling financially enough to consider Beautiful staying home. We were using most of her income every month, so it would have been irresponsible to go down to one income.

We were also concerned with saving for the long-term possibility of transplant and wondering how much we’d have to save to adopt. Not very likely that we were going to save up $50k for those events any time soon at the rate we were going – even with the steady upward slope we’ve experienced the whole time we’ve been married. That’s a lot of money to throw around!

Beautiful has always wanted to work. She didn’t see herself getting married and settling down before I came along, but even then the plan was to go to college and get a degree and have a career. Kids have been creeping into our heads more and more over the years, but it was always the same story: we just couldn’t swing one income.

For me, it was starting to wear down my self-esteem. It’s so easy to compare ourselves to others who have one working parent and the other that stays home with the kids. Even our marriage mentors are both home on one income – he works in the bedroom office and she home-schools their 3 girls (sound like anything we might be thinking of doing?). Even though I’m 32, it’s hard to remember that we’ve only been working at this as a team for 5 years and I need to step back and look at where we are and where we’ve come from.

[Read more…]

What Doesn’t Break You Only Makes You Stronger

July 23, 2011

I'll see if I can get through this post without grabbing a Kleenex, so start your engines. My little buddy, Kaleb, has been having a heckuva time lately with infections and now he's landed in the hospital with lung/blood infections, walking … [Read more]

Stuffy Ears and Fears of Allergies

July 18, 2011

For several weeks now I have been experiencing uncomfortable swelling inside my right ear canal. Just my right ear. Just near the earlobe - shallow enough to touch with my pinkie. I put up with it for days before I realized it was following any sort … [Read more]

Join Us on Social Networks Like Google Plus

July 13, 2011

Many of us have found each other through social networks, usually our blogs' blogrolls in the sidebars. But many of us are also carrying on daily conversations on the major social networks. I wanted to put together a place where we can post our … [Read more]

Life Goals – How Foster Parenting Fits In

July 5, 2011

If you would have asked me a year ago if I thought we'd become foster parents, I'd have said that there wasn't any chance. We were definitely thinking we'd be adopting or even possibly wondering if we'd ever have kids since we were both working so … [Read more]

Friday morning I’d had enough

Google +

Time Elapsed Since IVs