Victorious — Brad Dell

Bradley was a dramatic kid. I’d sit up in bed at night, unable to lie down because it made me cough, and wonder whether Prometheus ever became used to having his liver pecked out each day. I concluded…

“You need space at the table for five wheelchairs?”  The waitress’s eyes exploded from her skull, shocked to the degree I’d expect if I were to ask that she seat five…

It’s been almost three years since a port-a-cath infection nearly killed me. A fungal infection invaded my bloodstream and attempted murder, shutting down my organs and blasting me into a dimension of hallucination and suffering for days. When…

I was fully deaf, too weak to walk across my living room (I couldn’t reach my upstairs bedroom anymore), constantly coughing and vomiting, soaked in sweat and wheezing, too anxious to face friends, under my parents’ 24/7 supervision,…

The night I received my first Hill-Rom Vest — at age 5 — was a fun one. It was a beast of a machine in the mid-1990s, a white box weighing maybe 50 pounds. Large, plastic, hollow coils…

There’s a rattle in my chest when I inhale. I sweat and dig my nails into my palm. I feel it, microseconds of dread and fear as the rattling gives way to something like the plugging and unplugging of…

A dad at the church I attend came up to me and said his newborn daughter had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. He looked tired; his motivation for telling me was mostly to ensure that the situation…

Heard enough about “Five Feet Apart” yet? I know you’re begging to read just one more piece about it, right? I saw the movie about a week after its release and wasn’t planning to write about it.

Note: I do not write on behalf of the entire CF community. No one does. This is about my preference. The most amusing, yet irritating, thing a person without chronic conditions can do to me…

I shoulda seen it coming. (That’s what I always say in hindsight, once it hits.) Maybe I shoulda known when five people at church told me I look “really, really tired.” Perhaps the signs were there when…

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…

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.