Cystic Fibrosis Fatboy

Some days I feel like I’m dying. Other days I feel great.

It is the great killer of busy CFers. Stress!

I’ve never handled stress well, physically, although I have found myself to mentally thrive on massive amounts of stress. In fact, Beautiful has told me (on a number of occasions) that she knows I’m stressing out about something – often something I’m not able to put my finger on for a number of days – when I begin to take on more and more things while she’s fully aware that I’m overworked. I guess for me, it’s not really the stress itself, but how I cope with stress: exertion.

Maybe I was called “lazy” too many times as a kid or teen, I don’t know, but I do know you won’t find anyone who knows me now that could say that with a grain of truth. I’ve come to realize that enough is enough and too much really does have a physical effect on me. My greatest example: the last few months before we got married almost killed me.

I really couldn’t have been any happier, but anyone who’s gone through the whole wedding process knows it’s stressful, even for the groom because he’s got a stressed out bride, parents, and in-laws. Make it a 4-month engagement, and you’re asking Fatboy to get sick, and sick I did. In 2006, I was on IVs 4 times before the end of October, on home O₂ for a month, and had my port placed 3 weeks before our wedding. I was working 40-60 hours per week with some hair-brained idea of trying to be “worthy” to marry Beautiful, as if I still had anything to prove after she said, “yes.” More on this later.

Our next example is when we moved to our new house. I was on IVs within a couple of weeks after we were “settled.” The packing, moving, unpacking, and adjusting to life in a new space didn’t sit well with my immune system. IVs again when I got unjustly let go and spiraled into a good 3-month depression and drawn out sickness. Again when I was in full swing with college and running my business. I didn’t have a spare moment as I was up by 5:30 and often working or doing homework past midnight. I narrowly escaped IVs last Spring for graduation – an incident that we are convinced was because I was fully compliant and on such a high-calorie diet that I was able to cushion myself enough.

So, here I am again. Stressed.

We’ve had plans to meet with our marriage mentors for weeks, but someone or another keeps getting too busy or sick, so we finally get to meet with them tomorrow night after dinner. Maybe they’ll have some creative ideas since they also both work from home in a situation similar to ours, except she also home-schools their 3 daughters while he works at the computer like I do.

We do our best to take off quality time to do things that we enjoy, but with the ups and downs of business, it’s easy when it’s a great month but time off during a scarce month just adds to my stress rather than relieving it.

We have 2 weeks until we fly to SoCal for my first trip to Cali, and I am very much looking forward to R&R at the resort and very much dreading the anxiety of not working.

I need to relax.

One day I’ll figure out how. I just want it to be on my terms…