Breathe and Believe — Kate Delany

Recently, while I was in the political organizing world where I spend so much of my time, a random hospital memory popped into my head. It was of a routine experience from the days when my younger sister, Mary, a cystic fibrosis patient, was in respiratory failure. She was on…

When I was a kid, at the start of every school year my mother would pay a visit to my younger sister Mary’s new teacher to share information about Mary’s cystic fibrosis. One of the items she would share was a “Super Cystic and Fabulous Fran Fibrosis” book. These…

Herbs have been an important part of my life for more than a decade. Herbal remedies play an essential role in maintaining my health. I also believe in science and support modern medicine. As cold and flu season rolls around, it might be a good…

In his short story titled, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” writer Raymond Carver dramatizes an evening in which a small group of friends sits around a dining room table drinking and reminiscing. They share stories that are both intense and rambling. The friends discover that…

Having a chronic illness, or caring for someone who does, means spending a lot of time thinking about an organ or body system, usually in a very specific way. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the lungs of my younger sister, Mary, who has CF. I’ve stressed over…

Studies about healthy people with chronically ill siblings are rare. Almost every study examining the psychological impact of illness on the well siblings begins, “This is an underexplored demographic.” This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been a well sibling since age 3,…

My sister Mary was just in the hospital for the first time in nine months. Though she was an inpatient over the holidays last winter, as so many cystic fibrosis patients often are, we couldn’t visit her because of the pandemic, which made the experience even more difficult. Nine months…

Cystic fibrosis took my sister’s hearing. Well, actually, it was prolonged exposure to Tobi (tobramycin). Tobramycin is a frequently prescribed bactericidal antibiotic, or aminoglycoside, that’s effective in dealing with CF exacerbations. Because it’s so good at beating back pseudomonas, many adult CFers use it frequently and for extended…

“This just feels so sudden,” I said to the doctor who had just become my sister Mary’s new CF physician. Days before, she’d been transferred from one CF center to another in need of an emergency lung transplant. Though I had always known that my sister would eventually need a…

When I was a kid and adults learned that my younger sister, Mary, had cystic fibrosis, their standard response was a meaningful sigh coupled with a slow nod. Then, they’d often tell me, “Oh yes, I read the book.” I knew what they were going to say before the words…