Cystic Fibrosis News Today Forums Forums Community Spotlights 31 Days of CF 2022 Day 11 of #31DaysOfCF: Have You Met Cynthia Fibrosis?

  • Day 11 of #31DaysOfCF: Have You Met Cynthia Fibrosis?

    Posted by jessie-madrigal-fletcher on May 12, 2022 at 4:11 pm

    Lauren Michele is a 23-year-old cystic fibrosis (CF) patient from Dallas. She was diagnosed at 5 months old, and for Lauren that means her CF is like a family member. In fact, she goes by the name Cynthia Fibrosis.

    Lauren and Cynthia Fibrosis have had a lifetime of memories together: hospitalizations, infections, a G-tube, surgeries, and many other things. She’s like an annoying little sister that won’t go away.

    For Lauren, it was hard to find anyone to relate to because she was a Black girl with CF, and she says: “Finding a Black person with CF is like finding a unicorn!”

    The advice Lauren has for other CF patients is to embrace every aspect of the illness, and live your best life!

    Lauren, you have an incredible spirit and a fantastic sense of humor!

    Now back to our CF Community: How do you define your own relationship with CF?

    To read the rest of Lauren’s story, and learn more about her journey towards self-acceptance, click here.

    Our #31DaysOfCF initiative is running for the entire month of May. Each day, we are featuring a different story, and a different view of life with CF. To read all of the stories, visit our website.

    paul-met-debbie replied 1 year, 10 months ago 1 Member · 1 Reply
  • 1 Reply
  • paul-met-debbie

    Member
    May 13, 2022 at 1:22 pm

    When I was a person, I thought I was in the body and the body was ill. I also thought that I was the one that had to keep the body alive by interfering, planning and caring. This was a lot of trouble and it felt like a curse. But all the time, what actually happened was that everything just happened and went along by itself and conditioned reflexes, and all the perceived actions of the person were an illusion that the mind added to everything that happened by itself, a fraction of a second after it had already happened in the most complete way. After seeing through this, this function of the body (it was the mind) stopped. This was liberating and felt much more true than the previous contraction of the mind.

    Now I don’t have a relationship with CF. It  just seems to be there for the former person because of conceptualizing.  So is the body.  I am neither the disease nor the body anymore, nor was I ever truly.

    The body is in me. The body takes care of itself. There is no doing of me needed or possible.  The body and me are one.

    Things happen to and in the body from themselves but they don’t effect me.  When the body is in trouble or pain, I watch how the body deals with that perfectly. I can’t do anything, but everything is done by and in me without effort, planning or doing.

    The body functions in a certain way as best as it can, until it stops functioning. This is called death. The death of the body is not the end of me. The birth of the body is not the start of me. I am aliveness. I am timeless. I am utter freedom  and creativity.

Log in to reply.