how long 'til my soul gets it right?

An old friend I'd found on Facebook emailed me yesterday. It was an article from a San Franciso paper that mentioned CF and the cost of caring for CF. I actually had no idea that this old friend even knew I had CF. And that he'd think of me after all these years. It was interesting. I wrote him back and further explained some of the information the article touched on. And I was OK with that. There was a time I would have been mad at someone for sending me a Cf related article because I WAS NOT LIKE THOSE PEOPLE. The farther away that time gets, the funnier it seems.

So the swimming. I realized yesterday that I am not pushing myself as hard as I can because I don't want to cough. I still cough a bit as it is, enough for someone to comment on it already. But if I really start working I am going to do some serious coughing and I just don't want to. While I have masterd the ability to cough underwater and cough while swimming (oh, yes I have!) those aren't productive enough coughs to be able to hide a serious coughing attack. Damn this disease.

I also had another swimming epiphany. My dad put me in competitive swimming when I was 9 as a means to keep my lungs clear as I was completely out of control if my paretns tried to perform manual CPT on me. I HATED the swimming. I was always the smallest, slowest one. I could never keep up. After 20 years it finally occurred to me that maybe that was Cf related??

Now, I have to admit that changed in high school. The team I was on as a kid was a serious USS swimming team. When I got to high school I was actually pretty good, because it was a different caliber of swimmer and having trained as a USS swimmer for years before I was not too shabby as a high school swimmer, which made me like swimming a lot more. I eventually became a co-captian of the team and was an alternate at State. But still, I did hit a plateau in my swimming that I never did get over while other girls who had been slower than me eventually passed me by. It never, ever occured to me until just the other day that Cf could have had a thing to do with any of this. But maybe it did? If so, I am actually glad I was in denial for so long, as how easily that could have become a crutch or an excuse for failure?