Brad Dell is Deaf and was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 2 months old in 1993. He received a double-lung transplant from UC San Francisco in January 2017, then cochlear implants nine months later. He lives in Hawaii, where he was raised. Usually he’s traveling the world, chugging coffee, or devouring books. He also pastors Restoration Community Church and serves as the director of community content at Bionews, this site’s publisher.
I’ve been trying to write more. I promise. But my tacrolimus dose is pretty up there, and it’s getting on my nerves. Literally. Nerve pain from the medication, an immunosuppressant used in lung transplant management, has me…
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With CF, there are fights to live taking place in the hospital. And then there are fights to live taking place in the streets and in political offices. Germs will always be out to kill us —…
Jan. 14, 2017 was the worst day of anxiety I’d had in the five months of waiting for my lung transplant. A frantic, nearly palpable tension was in the air. After five confident months believing the…
“I can give something to relax you,” the doctor says. I stiffly nod, neck taut and arm outstretched for an arterial blood gas test. The doctor holds up a syringe — a drop of shiny liquid…
The world isn’t fair. Anyone born with a genetic disease like cystic fibrosis before they’ve even had a chance to earn bad karma knows that. But that doesn’t mean we need to stand…
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about misunderstandings within the CF community. But what about misunderstandings projected into the community from the outside? If you’re a non-CFer, keep these things in mind when interacting with someone…
“You’re so lucky.” I’ve heard and read that all too often over the past year. I’m lucky I lived to my 20s with cystic fibrosis, I’m lucky I had a lung…
“Cystic fibrosis is a genetic lung disease.” That’s an accurate statement, sure. But it doesn’t reflect the diversity of patient cases — the myriad mutations that cause each case of CF, and the unique medical contexts that…
I’ve gone through life afraid of numbers. Not just math, although I’m really terrible at that. Numbers like “37”: the life expectancy of someone with CF, a number that was even lower when I was…
I walk through a football stadium. I catch a whiff of the cotton candy and am smacked back to every procedure I’ve had, breathing in the stale cotton candy-scented anesthetic before I drift to nothingness. I…
I won’t lie. The first two months after my double-lung transplant were rough. I wasn’t in much pain, but my body was struggling to adjust to the cornucopia of transplant drugs, and I experienced the torment…
Last week I wrote about how lung transplantation isn’t the Boogeyman I once thought it was. After I had done my research, I finally considered being evaluated for a transplant. My doctors and I expected…
There are two great fears in a person’s young life: “The Talk” and the Boogeyman. The Transplant Talk is an intertwining of the two for many with cystic fibrosis. My dad was deployed in Iraq when I…
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