Fat Ash Ketchum by ~Ranguru
I’ll do my best to not be graphic or disgusting for this article, but I’m afraid that’s not really going to be possible. If you don’t like fart jokes, or are generally turned off by anything related to bodily functions, stop now. This is cystic fibrosis. This is real life. /end warning
I’m getting much better at not being gross since meeting/dating/marrying Beautiful, but cystic fibrosis is a disgusting disease, is it not? I have a feeling that one of the reasons I didn’t have as many friends as I should have in elementary school was my problem with my intestinal gas. This came as a huge shock to Beautiful when I told her, but I remember being in the 6th grade when I first discovered that you could hold back a fart. That must not have been conducive to making or keeping friends when we all had to sit together in little table groups of 4-6 students. I can just imagine the thought bubbles of 20 years ago: “I don’t want to get in Jesse’s table group for the next 12 weeks. He smells bad!”
I really had no idea before then, and even if I did, I honestly don’t know what I would have been allowed to do about it.
For those without CF, all I can say is that the pressure is almost unimaginable, second only to a complete intestinal blockage. The increased pressure is a direct result of poor absorption of the food we eat. I am doubtful that the teachers would have been allowed to have me wandering off down the hall to the bathroom every time my pressure meter started to rise because that would be a special privilege and I would have missed countless hours of classroom instruction had I done that.
