Brad and Maile Tatsuno-Dell tell the story of their relationship, from meeting through a mutual friend to eventually getting married. Brad discusses his perspective on love and relationships as someone with cystic fibrosis (CF), and Maile shares her thoughts as his wife and as an occupational therapist.
Transcript
Maile: My name is Maile Tatsuno Dell now.
Brad: And I am Brad Tatsuno Dell. So we met in January 2021 through a mutual friend who had learned that, you know, I was moving back to the islands from San Jose, and he said, “Oh, I actually have a friend from San Jose who’s out there, and I think you would really get along.” And I was kind of, you know, trying to escape San Jose, so I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but I figured I’d meet with her anyway.
Maile: Yeah, we met and there was no sparks. I was like, “Okay, he seems cool.” I think we hung out maybe like one or two more times after that, and then I didn’t — I don’t think I saw you for like almost a year after. Yeah, we reconnected, like at the end of the year because I was asking — I was like, looking for a book, and Brad reads all the time. So I was like, “You know who probably has this book? Brad.” So I messaged him. I was like, “Hey, do you have this book?” And then we just started chatting about the book.
Brad: She was taking a road trip from San Jose to San Diego, which is about eight and a half hours or so, and she asked if I wanted to talk on the phone. And I was okay with that, surprisingly, because I don’t like talking on the phone. I’m also deaf and hearing through cochlear implants, so not always my favorite thing. But we ended up talking for like the entire eight and a half hours. Kind of got off the phone and thought, “Oh no, I think something happened here.”
Long distance was to our advantage. It was a lot easier to mask a lot of my cystic fibrosis symptoms. And post-lung transplant, I don’t have too many coughing symptoms and whatnot, but I fart a lot. And — so when she got married to me, she realized, you know, it wasn’t just “Brad has an occasional bad meal or something.” I’m always farting.
Maile: I mean, he’s also technically deaf, right? And he has cochlear implants, but they’re not perfect. So I think sometimes when we’re out, he’ll, like, let one rip. I was kind of like, “Dude, like, what the crap? I’m like right behind you — like, why would you do that?” And he’s like, “What? You could hear that?”
Because for him, he was out here thinking he’s doing all these “silent but deadly” ones, like constantly.
Brad: Yeah.
Maile: But in reality, everyone heard them. But I don’t think — that’s not something he learned until after we got married.
As an occupational therapist, I’m like, “Enough, remove that.” I’m not directly in his world, but I feel like I’ve learned a lot from him — mostly of just like, what does it feel like to be a patient?
Brad: And so it’s been cool to see her caring for all of these other patients with strokes and brain injuries and whatnot and just knowing, “Oh cool, I have someone who’s going to be there for me too.” That gave me a lot of peace of mind going into the actual marriage because I was like, “She knows what she’s signing up for.”
You’re not always going to be able to find people who your love latches onto who understand those things. But to have someone who does has been a very meaningful experience for me. I’ve not really come across a CF patient who doesn’t manifest some sort of trauma from their experience.
If you’re getting in a relationship with someone who is also able-bodied and you have a disease — like, just letting them know, like, “This is some real stuff.” And also giving them permission to kind of correct your narrative at times. A lot of the time Maile was like, “You went through a lot of stuff that kids don’t go through. That’s not normal.” That’s very validating for me.
When you enter a relationship, there are going to be dynamics of guilt and shame that come out of having lived with cystic fibrosis. It’s just not fair to you or the other person if you go for the long term and you’re not involving them in the process of what’s really going on inside your heart.
Maile: Even though I’m coming from a medical background, like, there is still so much about cystic fibrosis or about living with chronic illness — living with a lung transplant — that, like, I didn’t know. Like, I’m glad that Brad has been pretty open with me.
Brad: If you find yourself really yearning for a romantic relationship and you’re just seeing, like, “It’s just not going to be doable with a disease,” I just want to say that that’s a load of BS.
I really had kind of given up on the idea of marriage for a good number of years and just didn’t feel like it’d be fair for me to get in a relationship with someone. But Maile knew what she was signing up for, and it’s for her to decide what’s fair for her or not.
I think just opening yourself to possibility and knowing that you don’t really actually write the script for your future unless you really want to. Like, you can release the pen and let life take place.