Goodbye friend.

Four days ago my friend Gessner was taken off of life support. He had CF, he was a fiBro. I got to meet him in Boston in May. I've gone out to coffee with his wife, they're from Seattle. He had a massive infection that just shut down his body. I wasn't able to go to the hospital to visit because I'm on IVs for pneumonia. I feel bad about that. I know his wife understands, if anyone would its her. But part of me saw this coming, I knew that when he went on the vent he wouldn't come off of it. But still, I have no business wandering around the hospital possibly infecting people.

Gess was a good guy. One day chatting on facebook we compared CF tattoos. He's definately going to be missed by many people. But I do find it comforting that his corneas went to someone. His last act was helping someone see. I know that where ever he is, he's happy about that.

My xray experience.

So I went in for a chest xray. I'm a verteran of this process and I hate to change at the hospital. So I wore a sports bra under my tshirt. No metal, so no changing. I got checked in at the desk and the lady said "Oh you get these a lot, so you know the drill right?" Yup, I have a seat and wait for my xray person to call me.

My xray person called me in a couple of minutes and we headed back to the room. She then notices that I'm not wearing a humilating hospital gown. "Is there any metal in your bra?" she asks.

I say no. She says "No clasps or hooks or anything? Because I'd just have to have you change and redo the xrays which gives you more radiation."

"No metal, I get these all time so I know how it goes."

She takes the first shot of my back. Before she even gets back into the room I have turned around for the side shot and I'm holding onto the bar above my head. She kind of giggled and said "Oh! You really do know what you're doing!" Damn skippy!

Dear Lung,

Last year when you decided to get all pneumonia-y on me you didn't give me a single clue that anything was wrong until a large section of you collapsed. You've never been quite right ever since then. So when you started to hurt a little bit on Monday I wasn't too worried. Its happened before but has always gone away. However, this time it didn't go away. I would really prefer not to go through the hell of having you collapse again so I called the doctor. A chest xray was ordered which showed a small spot of pneumonia. So, while having you hurting me is not fun, and IV antibiotics are less than conveinient, I do appreciate the warning this time around. Now, please stop doing this like this from now on.

Mexico.

I know I said I would do a real blog about my trip to Mexico......but I just haven't been feeling it. So let me just say that I had a great time, the cruise ship was awesome, and I would definately do it again. I'm working on a new slide show to put that will probably put things into words better than I can anyway.

On another note, the night I got home from Mexico I ended up in the emergency room. *eye roll* My left lung started hurting. Last time my left lung hurt it collapsed and I ended up in the hospital for 4 days and on IVs for 3 weeks. So I didn't want to screw around with it. But I basically wasted 6 hours of me and J's time over nothing. Oh well. Better safe than sorry right? Now my sinuses are really bothering me.

I'm home!

I just wanted to let everyone out there know that I'm back from Mexico! I had an awesome time and I will do a better blog about it later I promise. I'm just wrung out from traveling, then a little while after I got home I ended up in the ER with chest pain. They were concerned because I flew so they wanted to rule out a clot. It turned out to be nothing and I went home. The pain is gone today but I woke up with a bad migraine so I slept most of the day. Welcome home right? Can I go back on the ship because I felt fine there!

Tattoo Evolution

So, I've decided that I want to add to my CF tattoo (the 3 purple roses). The roses represent me, my brother, and our cousin, all with CF. I want to add a fully bloomed rose for each of close cysters and fibros that I've met, and a rose bud for the ones who died before I got to meet them. The original roses are the only ones that will be purple, all the others will be the color that the person chooses (or in the case where they have passed away their favorite color or the closest thing to it other than purple). I'm thinking of doing banners for each rose with the person's name but I'm not sure about that yet. I hope to add 4 or 5 roses every year as I have the money. Eventually this thing will be a sleeve because we're talking about a lot of people.

Neuro follow up.

My MRI and EEG were totally normal! As it stands now my chances of another seizure are about 25% and I don't have to go back to neuro unless I have another one!