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  • Winter Storms and Other Disasters

    Posted by jenny-livingston on February 16, 2021 at 1:45 pm

    Over the last few days, the United States has been hit with deadly winter storms in areas that rarely see even a single snowflake. Millions of people are without power, travel conditions are treacherous, and more severe weather is predicted in the coming days.

    Friends in the CF community have shared about the challenges of finding a hotel with electricity in order to do their treatments, among the other frustrating and scary circumstances they currently face. For me, that’s always been the biggest concern regarding loss of electricity or other disaster scenarios: treatments and my CF care.

    We currently have a gas powered generator that we use for camping, so that could be used to power my Vest and nebulizer for several treatment sessions if necessary. Once in the past, I did get a hotel room for the night when we lost electricity so I could do my treatments and to avoid cold temperatures.

    Have you ever had to do something similar? Have you experienced a disaster (natural or otherwise) that interrupted your usual care routine? 

    I’m also sending love and well-wishes to anyone struggling right now. Whether stuck in these storms or facing other challenges right now, we are thinking of you and hoping for the best.

    paul-met-debbie replied 3 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • tim-blowfield

    Member
    February 16, 2021 at 5:05 pm

    My condolences to all suffering from this ‘global warming’. So many suffering from the failure of electricity supply.

  • paul-met-debbie

    Member
    February 17, 2021 at 4:17 am

    Once I had to.

    Friends persuaded me to join them on a camping trip in France. I hate camping, but against my intuition I thought this might be a good challenge for me. I was wrong (that is to say: my mind was).

    We had a little caravan, and for the first few days everything was not so bad at all.
    Then, one night, we woke up because our little house on wheels was moving about by itself, dancing to the sounds and forces of a huge storm (the summer-tornado like type). Also we heard the eery noise of trees snapping. We didn’t even dare to look outside.

    When the storm had passed in the morning, we opened the door of our caravan and saw the devastation around. Only by a miracle we had not been crushed by three trees that snapped off and fell around us, missing our beds by only 3 feet or less. On an adjacent camping, several campers had not been so lucky and died.

    Of course, being in France, electricity was gone. Fortunately, the car was still okay and I had a little converter to turn 12V DC into the 220V AC that the old nebulizer needed. So for a couple of times, I nebulized in the car, listening to the music of the radio, comtemplating our good fortune.

    Since then, I always keep this converter at hand and find a little rest in the thought that, if ever we would temporarily lose the house, I still could save myself in the car for a couple of days.

    And I have not been camping since.

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