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I was made redundant last year. A week later, I turned 30. One week after that, I found out that I had failed to make it into the preliminary stages of the first publishing competition I’d entered. Then the following week, I was admitted to hospital…

We sat in pristine sands shadowed by titanic sentries dubbed The Twelve Apostles. At the southern end of Australia, I assume they guard against Antarctic penguins, like how The Wall in “Game of Thrones” defended against White Walkers. Maybe an invasion of penguins wouldn’t be bad. “I…

One of the first fiction books I read in adulthood was a book called “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon. The story of how I came across “Kavalier & Clay” begins in high school. In my senior literature class, we had to write…

Sexuality is complicated. Sexuality when you have chronic illness is doubly so. Finding out who you are and what you may or may not be attracted to becomes a mess when you factor in antibiotics that can easily affect libido, plus comorbidities like depression that can often cast a gray pall…

Picture the scene: You’re standing in front of a sea of faces about to present something. You’re a woman who’s 5 feet, 2 inches (OK, 5 feet, 1½ inches) tall. Oh, and several of your major organs don’t work properly. While a healthy person may…

During my sophomore year of college, the background on my computer screen was a cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein, specifically a visualization of its quaternary structure. It looked something like this image. The simplified graphic isn’t an exact representation of what the CFTR protein looks…

Doctors diagnosed me with cystic fibrosis (CF) at 18 months old and I recently turned 29. It’s safe to say I’ve never known a life without it. Growing up, I became accustomed to treatments and pills, my life punctuated by responsibilities in the midst of childhood fun. Despite all that,…

During these last two weeks, I’ve felt the sickest I have in years. I was admitted into the hospital for a bronchoscopy, intravenous antibiotics, and continuous aminophylline infusion to counteract chest tightness. Amid the nausea, sweats, sleeplessness, pain, bruised veins from botched access attempts,…

Imagine how much easier cystic fibrosis (CF) would be if we didn’t have fears. What if we stared death in the eye and laughed? Age 23 was destined to be my last year on earth. Hospital staff had that awkward talk with my family and girlfriend…

In high school, I aspired to be a pulmonologist for obvious reasons: I wanted to aid the CF community by directly helping patients. It seemed logical. I dreamed of becoming a pulmonologist because my CF doctors had been some of my greatest role models. They were quite literally…