New Beginnings

OK so this is my first blog ever, here goes...

As you may or may not have read in my profile I am a 32 year old female with cystic fibrosis.  I am married to the best guy in the world although I don't tell him as much as I should.  My mom currently lives with us and our 3 dogs: Chewbacha, Lucy and Winter.  We are all one big happy family (most of the time), we live in Easton, PA. 

I decided to start a blog because I got inspired by another CF blogger that I randomly found one day.  After many years of denial the past couple of years have bitch slapped me pretty hard.  To sum it up my hubby and I moved to the UK in September of 2008 along with Chewy and Lucy (BTW bringing dogs into the UK is a hot nightmare), we relocated for my job where I have worked since May of 2000, it was a great promotion and one that I was looking forward to immensely.  Everything was going great until I began to feel sick and to make an extremely long story short I had to wait 4 months for an appointment with the CF clinic in London.  During the waiting period we flew back to the US for Easter, the entire time we were back I was so sick I could barely get out of bed but was stubborn and refused to be taken to the ER, I wanted to wait until we got back to the UK because my long awaited appointment was 3 days after we were scheduled to return.  About 3 days prior to our departure I broke down and let my hubby take me to the ER at Robert Wood Johnson in New Brunswick, NJ.  I was SICK - I ended up being admitted and was in inpatient for close to 4 weeks, I was on the normal CF IV antibiotics among other things.  This is when I met my current CF doctor who is AWESOME and one of the best doctors that I have ever worked with - I normally do not like my doctors and I fight and kick and scream every step of the way - this is my way of attempting to stay in control of my life.  So anyhoo after much debate hubby and I decided that we needed to move back to the US due to my health care needs so after a 7 month stint in the UK here I was again, back in the US with a major dose of reality in my face.

I was able to keep my job and work from home, it has worked out great on that front, the only thing that is a pain is that I have to keep European hours so technically I should start work around 5AM, yuck, silver lining though is that I am normally done by 1 or 2 PM, yay :)

The past 18 months have been interesting, from the getgo the great new doctor (Dr. S) has been talking to me about the option of a lung transplant, until very recently I have been giving the response of a BIG FAT NO!  Well time passes and sometimes we are forced to see the truth before we are actually ready to.  I have had to go on IV twice in the past 8 months or so, I remember the days when I was young and in school and IV would only be required once/year, it wasn't even a necessity either, it was for preventative reasons.  My how things change...

So here I am now - About 2 months ago I told Dr. S that I was ready to consider the transplant and in fact I would welcome it should I be a good candidate.  He wrote up a letter and sent that along with my medical records to the University of Pennsylvania Lung Transplant center in Philadelphia, he said I may hear from them soon or it could take a while - I was cool with a while - it was a huge step for me.  To my surprise I received a phone call about 3 weeks after the letter and records were submitted - they wanted to set up a consultation - we set it up for October 28th. 

Will write more next time - rewriting all of this is like reliving it as I am sure a lot of you know...

Thanks for reading :)