Making it in the real world

Well. My colonoscopy came back with terrible results. We found more problems than expected and quite frankly, I'm having a hard time letting it all soak in. I just keep telling myself that I don't have time for this. I'm not sure if it's not having time, or the fact that I am scared out of my skull that something else is wrong. Do you ever feel like there are a million arguements going on inside of your head? That's how I've felt for the past 4 days. I haven't even been able to blog because I just feel like my thoughts are going in circles and circles. I am going to have to start infusions and new medicines to try and help my colon issues out. I have to do this on top of my normal treatments and clinic appointments. On top of being a full-time student. On top of working 30 hours a week. On top of going to an internship 16-20 hours a week. I don't know how to handle it all. I don't know how at 20 years old, I am already supposed to prioritize my life and give up things that are important me due to my health. I try to talk to my friends and family. They are all super supportive but it's always the same answer in the end "we'll get through it.". I suppose I can't expect them to say much else, or to fix what I'm going through. I just wish there was some guidance somewhere to make this easier. I don't want to sound mean and say they don't understand either, but sometimes that's just how I feel. Sometimes there is just so much pain, hurt, and confusion in my life that I wish I could share with someone, but that would be asking too much. Overall, I would say this post is pretty pointless, but I just had to get some of this stuff off of my chest.

Growing older sucks

Ok. Everyone knows that when your 50 you are supposed to start receiving the "dreaded" colonoscopy. It's important for everyone to do to make sure that you stay as healthy as you can. However, quite frankly I am tired of the bad rep that they get. Obviously, if you read my blog, you know that I am younger. But with the joys of having CF and with a lot of my issues being digestive, I had the pleasure of receiving my 3rd or 4th one of these bad boys last week. So I thought this would be a great place to share my experience to show everybody-Hey,it's not so scary or awkward or embarrassing. Sure, you don't want to go around bragging about it, but in reality it's no big deal. So here's my week outline...

First. You get the pleasure of doing a liquid diet. For most people it is just the day before the procedure-but lucky me, I had to do a 2 day liquid diet. You get to indulge in Popsicles, broth, water, Gatorade, and clear gelatin.The only tricky part about this step is staying away from the colors red,orange, and purple. I learned the hard way that those are the majority colors of Popsicles.  However, I was able to find a citrus assortment box with yellows and greens so I was good to go.

Then you get this bad boy. My specific prep is called golytely. This will be the hardest part about the colonoscopy. It tastes absolutely awful-and depending on your doctor you will either drink it all in one sitting or you'll do a split bowel prep. I had the pleasure of doing split bowel prep, so I drank half Wednesday night and then had to get up early Thursday morning and drink the rest of it. It's hard to drink-but you gotta do it.

Procedure day is the easiest day-unless you're like me and have a procedure that's scheduled at 2 pm. That's right-I had to go allllll day without anything to eat or drink. I had the strangest cravings by the time I was put to sleep. But anyways, you'll go to the hospital, get an iv, they'll take you back to the procedure room, and then an about an hour-two hours you'll wake up. You have no memory of what happened, and my doctor's had even waited until I was asleep to lift my gown up.




See? Not so scary right. Certainly not scary when you think about that not getting colonoscopies could increase your chances of not finding cancer and other stuff right away. I was in a little pain afterwards, but that's also because I had the pleasure of receiving 15 biopsies due to my condition. I am pretty sure that is not routine. And at the end of the day, you go home to the comfort of your home with knowledge of how your insides are looking.

Positive thoughts to start the week

I keep my blog so that I can really inform people about the good,the bad, and the ugly about Cystic Fibrosis. To me, my blog is about letting people into my life to see it's not always rainbows and butterflies. But I've noticed that the more that I post, the more I really don't post anything positive at all on my blog, or anything too much more than stuff that's Cystic Fibrosis related. So as I read other Cyster and Fibro's blogs-one particularly caught my eye. It's a woman named Colleen over at *Live*Laugh*Love*Breathe. She has a feature on her blog called Positive Thoughts Thursday.Every Thursday she takes the time to point out the positive things in her life-whether it's health related, family, love,work, or whatever. It really inspired me as a new blogger to really focus on taking some time to show people the positive in my life too. Of course my life is a roller coaster ride due to CF, but as you can see in my about me-I consider my life a beautiful disaster. Her posts really opened my eyes that I need to share the good too, and to show people that CF doesn't control my whole entire life. So with that being said, if I ever feel as if my blog is just being a depressing place to be or needs a little cheering up, I'm going to share a few things in my life that are going right in my life!

• This week(February 15th actually), I get to celebrate being with my amazing boyfriend for 4 years. It has been an awesome 4 years and I can't believe that I have had the privilege of spending it with someone so special. 
• With all of my health issues going on, I am still attending school full-time. This is my last semester and this is the first time that I have absolutely loved all of my classes. The people in the classes can be a little nutty, but the classes are really great.
• I am so glad that I have such a great GI team at Johns Hopkins. Through this whole process they have been extremely punctual and helpful. Within the 2 weeks that they have gotten involved we have already had an appointment with them, labs done, CTS and ultrasounds done, and my colonoscopy is scheduled. 

The Unknown of Cystic Fibrosis

When I get sick, I always wonder is this CF sick or another kind of sick? Does anyone else do that? Most of the times I brush it off as CF sick, but as I mentioned in my last post,something has been going on lately that I haven't been able to shake.

Insert IV here.

That's right.I broke down and went to the Emergency Room. After my sugar continually kept dropping, and I grew even more nauseated and dizzy, I knew I needed some medical attention. The results from the ER were that in a mere 3 days in between getting lab work done from my doctor, and this day, I had developed a serious bacterial infection. When you stack a bacterial infection on top of my current symptoms that are being looked at by GI-we had caught my body beginning to crash.The ER started me on some rounds of antibiotics and were able to give me some insulin and fluids to get me feeling at least better than what I was when I went in.I'll be following up with GI on Friday for the other problems that I'm having, and hopefully I'll be able to get back into my little routine of a life soon :)

2013-off to a CRAPPY start...

Yes, I did just use a terrible pun in the title of this post. If the topic of bowels offends you-then I promise that this post is one for you to ignore. I have always had backed up bowels-so when I woke up one morning with uncontrollable bowels, part of me was a little excited. I mean, this has never happened before! It was awesome! At first...But then, it didn't stop. So we threw out the idea that it was some sort of stomach bug. We have run some tests-and we are waiting for the results as of right now(Thursday). But since, my body has been on a steady decline. I have constant fatigue, I can't keep anything in my body, my sugar is low, and I'm starting to have some heavy chest pains. All I know at the moment is--this isn't a good sign.


Other bad things in 2013? We have lost entirely too many Cysters and Fibros already. 2013 isn't looking promising. It seems as if this is going to be a rough year for a lot of us and that worries me.

At least hockey is back!!!! 

This is me and my brother at the Sabres Caps Game 1/27/13

Oompa Loompa :(

I love candy.I love chocolate and ice-cream and cake.Basically, you could stick a straw in a bag of Domino sugar and I would suck it up and chase it with a nice glass of Mountain Dew.So it's no surprise that as I sat across from the dr today and she was describing this new "insulin resistance" that my body has, I was quite emotional. How can I be 20 years old and have diabetes already? Well, the truth is, it stems from the Cystic Fibrosis. I was expecting it to come eventually, as many people have warned me about it. So I get handed this packet and I have no where to start? So, here on my blog, I'll be able to document my progress,my pitfalls of this Diabetes journey. I have to follow the a-typical diabetic diet for two months and then get my blood insulin levels checked again. These blood insulin levels were at 125 and my fasting glucose was over 150 both times. So here's a new journey and Happy Birthday to me!

It's fall which means Pumpkin Lattes and Antibiotics!

Ok,so maybe I'm a Negative Nancy. But every fall-I end up getting severely sick.Maybe it's the change in weather, maybe it's the stress of school starting on top of everything else I have to do but it never fails. Today I woke up and I was fighting for air. Not exactly the best feeling in the World. I now get to spend 3 out of 7 days next week at the doctor's. At least there's a beautiful view of the leaves changing from my window.