The past month has been a busy one for me. I have been working 40 hours a week for my internship at a nursing home. I am learning all about being an administrator and loving it! I am learning so much and having a little bit of fun too! The people I work with are amazing and always take the time to explain things and help me to learn. Plus I get to dress nice every day ;) This internship is really helping me to realize that I might really want to be in charge of a nursing home one day. The job is so rewarding and being able to affect change and quality care for some really sweet people is something I'd love to do everyday.
The thing that rocks though is how well I am handling working full time. Having a set schedule allows me to set aside time at night to go for a nice long run, I am able to wake up early to do my treatments, and I have been going to bed nice and early to make sure I don't get too tired. I was always worried about what working full time would do for me. Would I be able to handle it?
Well I've proven to myself that I can. This is a breath of fresh air for the future: I know that, at least at this point, I don't have to let cf limit my work-life (of course taking into account that I will have many more responsibilities to balance in the future). My cough has come up just once, and the person who asked about it wasn't very phased by the fact that I had cf, and they didn't treat me any differently. With so much excitement about new drugs in the pipeline, that door is open even wider. I was always uncertain about the future. Thinking about it when I was a teenager would only make me cry and worry. But now, the future is staring me in the face. This summer I get a taste of what its like to balance a job and an illness... and I'm surviving.
The future is one bit less scary and hoping and praying that there will be a drug from vertex to change the course of cf adds to that refreshing feeling. Right now, I am seeing that its possible to live a normal life with cf, sure there will be bumps in the road, but the future IS changing. I now take many drugs that didn't exist when I was born. With each one, I see a difference. I have been inspired by cfers who change their lives by getting active. And once I did the same, I saw a difference. We might never be 100% cured, but at the very least, we might finally get cf under control, so that we can follow our passions and not be limited by bouts of sickness, a hacking cough, or exhaustion and fatigue. I'm past the point of being afraid of being unreasonable by saying the future is getting brighter, there's hope for a cure (or something close), and there WILL be a day where cf is not the deadly, life-changing disease that it is today. Step by step, we are getting there, and I'm living, breathing proof of that.