Narrow Escapes

I remember quite well typing “cystic fibrosis” into the search engine. I was at work, it was the fall of 2005 and I was on my lunch, maybe even my plan period. I was teaching 6th grade bilingual at a rough school on the west side of town. I had a small class, only about twelve students, and I loved them all very much. Often I was simply called “maestra” or more often than not, “mees!” Still, teaching is an emotionally and (for me, anyway) physically draining job, and I often used my lunch period to decompress, relax. So I don’t know what led me to search for CF that day, only that I did.

My first post started out like this: I am new here and I have been posting like crazy because I never talk to people about my CF and the few people that I know with it are "sick." I have read about so many healthy people here, it's great! I was 28 and sort of oblivious to the role that CF was playing in my life. I thought I was healthy, I thought I was “different;” I didn’t even know how to read my own PFTs. I was trying to get pregnant. It had been almost a year of trying to conceive with no luck. I already had a six year old boy, one whose conception took very little effort to achieve. I’ve always felt each of my children’s births had their own life saving purposes in my life, slowing me down, making me more aware of my mortality, but I wonder if something inside wasn't nagging me to take notice. Something had changed between age 21 and 28, something was hindering this conception or perhaps there was some reason, unbeknownst to me, why it wasn’t happening easily. I have no answers to why, but I know what happened that day: the penny dropped.

I have often wondered, what would have happened if I hadn’t put myself out there that day? Where would I be in the CF game? Over the four + years since that day, I have started using a vest, nebulizers, inhalers, got updated on Ct scans and lab work, had sinus surgery and had IV antibiotics. All things that were long overdue but that I learned were prophylactic rather than defining. I’ll never know, of course, what difference that first post on the CF forums made in altering the path that I am on, but I feel deep inside that it was purposeful rather than coincidental. Knowing not only the health benefits I’ve reaped since that day but the emotional and spiritual advancements that I have encountered as well, I believe fully that had I searched for “Urban Outfitters” or “Captain Morgan” that fall afternoon, things would be incredibly different.

**If you have not read the post below this, please do. And write your own Narrow Escape story...use the topic as freely as you wish!!**