Brad Dell is Deaf and was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 2 months old in 1993. He received a double-lung transplant from UC San Francisco in January 2017, then cochlear implants nine months later. He lives in Hawaii, where he was raised. Usually he’s traveling the world, chugging coffee, or devouring books. He also pastors Restoration Community Church and serves as the director of community content at Bionews, this site’s publisher.
I’ve been trying to write more. I promise. But my tacrolimus dose is pretty up there, and it’s getting on my nerves. Literally. Nerve pain from the medication, an immunosuppressant used in lung transplant management, has me…
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Mom raised me to be a hungry reader, so it wasn’t long until I explored one of her favorite genres, Southern Gothic. Tales from this corner of the library are identified by distorted realities, eerie supernaturalism, eccentric characters, and…
After years in a backstage role at my high school theater, I was pulled aside by the program director and told that, upon researching cystic fibrosis (CF), her staff had deemed my health too unreliable for me to continue…
For all the love I have for “Star Wars,” I could never get around to liking C-3PO. “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1!” the golden droid complained in “The…
When we stop hiding our wounds and instead make our pain a wellspring of compassion for others, we become “wounded healers” — hurt people who help hurt people. That’s what Henri Nouwen described in his book “The Wounded…
At the opening of Judeo-Christian Scriptures, the Creator lovingly forms humankind, then crafts and blesses the Sabbath, a sacred day set aside for rest. Rest filled humankind’s first full day. Before people were doing, they were being, and…
For two decades, plummeting pulmonary function percentages terrorized me, weight flew from my body, and my diagnoses list stretched longer than a CVS receipt. Trips to the clinic featured grim reports detailing my body’s ruin: estimated organ expiration…
I’m beginning to rethink the sources of my fatigue. Yes, sickness and physical activity are still real sources of exhaustion, but I’m realizing I’ve neglected a deeper flavor of struggle. Many of us sick…
Every week, to confront old wounds and maybe even heal, I open my mind so my subconscious can push memories to the surface. I feel the emotions there, recall the senses, and meditate on how they drive me today.
Now, years past the worst of it all — you know, the health crises — I feel safe enough to ponder my trauma and its lingering tolls. Psychologists identify four trauma responses: fight, flight, freeze, fawn. The fight…
There’s a person I really like. (I’m her boyfriend, it’s nice.) And when I really like someone, I drop my defenses. We were discussing the building blocks of our identity, and I realized mine mostly derive from cystic fibrosis,…
I’ll confess an omission. I waited two months before telling the publishing company I worked for that I’d been struck deaf. The thought of losing my journalism career paralyzed me. I assumed my disability disqualified me from my…
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