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I am having surgery in a few weeks. Again. It will be my third surgery in roughly eight months’ time, though I don’t know why I’m counting. I dislike people who count these things. Are we bragging? Am I bragging? Sort of. I tend to say “I average about…

I knew life would be different after my double-lung transplant three years ago, but I didn’t expect it to feel like a completely new life. The change has been intense. I feel like I barely have cystic fibrosis anymore. Feeling disconnected from the CF world has been an interesting…

“How do you keep going?” This is a question I know all too well. I’m not sharing this question in the same way that my eldest daughter “complains” about her extra-long eyelashes. (Like, we get it. It’s so hard.) I’m sharing this because sometimes sharing is all we can do…

When I took Advanced Placement psychology in high school, a few subjects stuck out to me as being intuitive. I was weirded out by this because the majority of school lessons were not intuitive. Math, chemistry, and biology are logical and scientific, but I don’t naturally understand cells, or how…

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers of the film “Sound of Metal.” I yearn for the days I drew close, very close, to death. Each thought, emotion, and sight weighed heavy. And each breath was precious; who knew if there’d be another? I’d become deaf, and silence became…

I hate the burden of feeling like a burden. I feel it all the time. I felt it last week when I went on a “bubble vacation” with two of my closest vaccinated friends. I felt it this week knowing I won’t be able to attend my cousin’s funeral.

Sometimes stress turns me into someone that I’m not. I’m never proud of knee-jerk reactions and am always looking to improve my coping skills. It’s a constant balancing act I haven’t mastered quite yet. Life with cystic fibrosis is stressful, and a double-lung transplant added another level of stress…

“Meeting Corey at 2 to walk in the park,” my mom texted me at 8:14 a.m. “Want to come? I know you don’t feel well,” she said, rounding it off, “but didn’t want to exclude you.” And that was how my mom began and ended the most perfect text in…

I am a creature of habit. So much so that it’s easy to forget that other chronic illness patients deal with their conditions in completely different ways. (Wait, we don’t all watch “Love Island UK” and cry until we need Liquid I.V. in our tea?) But recently, I decided to…

I can’t separate my physical malady from my mental diseases. Cystic fibrosis, depression, and anxiety are all linked, and they’re all separate. I think of my blend of comorbidities as a morbid sort of smoothie. I can tell what is going on whenever I don’t feel well, but a…