Paul met Debbie

Happy Thanksgiving you all!

Nothing like that in the Netherlands. We will save our energy until Christmas.

I once cancelle an appointment years ago because the highway was blocked and I could not get there at all. And in 2019 I cancelled my annual appointment because I had really nothing to report and was absolutely stable for the past 4 years. We mutually agreed that I could skip a year. In 2020 everything was cancelled by the hospital because of…[Read more]

Currently we are living in Grathem, a little hamlet in the rural south of the Netherlands.
150 miles from Amsterdam, 200 from Frankfurt and 350 from Paris.
I was also born in this county, but Debbie originates from Bury St. Edmunds (United Kingdom), although she has resided in the Netherlands since she was 4 years old.

Thought for the day: no…[Read more]

Thanks Jenny. She is funny 😀

That’s a nice expression, I didn’t know that. Rose, bud, thorn. This weekend.

Well, the rose would be our little dog Buddha recovering from a nasty stomach flu. We had to visit the vet for this one and after three days of antibiotics and a shot to calm her intestines she seems to feel almost completely fine again (three more to go). Which also…[Read more]

As usual I will try to provide some food for thought on this subject too.

It must be a piece of cake to respond to this item, after all I’ve got bigger fish to fry today, because some one has to bring home the bacon. As we all know, Bailey and Jenny, you are the cream of the crop, but for a writer of my caliber it should still be easy as pie to…[Read more]

Intuitive eating sounds great!
I never dieted. I could always eat what I wanted. I mostly grew up eating healthy, self prepared food. That is, my mother prepared it herself. By standards of today, there was probably too much meat and fat in it, and in those days (still?) they taught people with cf need a lot of extra calories. For me this…[Read more]

Interesting question. I have never looked at it this way. This is perhaps because to be able to take a day off, one first must indulge in the feeling that all the other days are “on”. So then the experience must be in the morning, opening your eyes, you are possessed immediately with the thought “another day with cf, let’s go deal with it”…[Read more]

Quoting the great philosopher W. the Pooh: “Little things mean a lot”.

For me, calling anything doesn’t really work anymore. Then, all that happens is an expression of the miracle of being. Since I don’t know what being is, I can’t call it by any name or give it any adjective. It is just what is. Isness. That’s my favorite thing. Living life as…[Read more]

Thank you for mentioning this, Jenny.
We watched the video today.
You all did a very good job!

ps We hope Bailey’s house did not burn down 🙂

That is a good question. My overwhelming “feeling” is that of gratefulness of just being. It becomes stronger every day. Nothing I can do about that, it just happens. It is not a syndrome, or if it is, a very joyful one I would wish for everyone to have.

There can be a myriad of feelings on top of that. You described some of them. In a way, they…[Read more]

Not being alone (separate). Peacefulness. Acceptance. Gratefulness. Comfort and support. Beauty. Miracles. The voice of God. Silence. Reassurance.

For me, these are all accounts of what I call Wholeness. This is what happens when we breathe gently, the mind is still, when conceptualizing breaks down. When there is surrender, the end of…[Read more]

I have also noticed the opposite in cf-world. About 40 years ago, I remember my mother asking in the annually Dutch cf patients meeting if it was at all wise to put so many patients together in one place, considering infection risks. Her question was met with a disapproving hiss of most of the people present. But of course she was right to be…[Read more]

Nerve damage/pain is a thing. I don’t know if CF impacted my nerves or the medication I took – but nerve damage has been done, that’s for sure. I contribute this to the medication, and especially I suspect the high doses of continual antibiotics I have had to take over many years. It’s also possibe that the ion-channel aberations in cf started t…[Read more]

My main workout consists of walking the dog 2 or 3 times a day. Although she prefers dry weather, she is not particularly impressed with the changing seasons. She exactly knows how late her walks are supposed to start and makes sure she is not forgotten. So this is a steady activity for me all year round.

In wintercold (january/february) when day…[Read more]

Well, I don’t think about what they might think. They know me by now, and I am always myself. So I feel free to call or email them anytime I have a question. It takes less time for them to answer my email or phone question than when I would come and visit them. At this time in covid-land, I think they prefer doing everything at a distance…[Read more]

Of course stress has a negative impact on the well being of body and brain.
These systems can cope with a certain amount of stress, but less than we like to think or society tells us, and there is always a price to pay.

The question we should ask therefore is: what do you do to minimize the amount of avoidable stress you get exposed to? How well…[Read more]

“War, power, ignite, fighting …”.

Although I sympathize with the cause of this event, I don’t resonate with the language in which it is worded. I know it is the popular way of speech, but that doesn’t makes it appropriate per se.
I spoke earlier about this in a post, with the question “do you feel a cf warrior?”

I think coping with any a…[Read more]

Yes, it’s a strange situation. You are handling it responsibly.
We try to avoid covid worries by sheer isolation/quarantaine. I wear gloves when I leave the house for a walk and keep at least 5m distance to other people. Since we both work at home, the chance of us getting infected or infecting some one else is almost zero, but you never know.…[Read more]

I don’t know.

I don’t categorize my friends like this. I only have a few, so I can keep them apart very well without putting them in labeled boxes. And I don’t label myself in this way either. That is not a conscious choice, but the biological state of my body simply is not on the forefront of my awareness enough to make it relevant as a means of…[Read more]