My High School Awakening

High School 1989 ~ 1993




Please don't laugh!!! Ok, Ok...you can laugh. I just did! The hair, the clothes, all just tragic :-/ Those were my favorite Beatlejuice tights. I think I wore them every other day all through high school.

High school was hard. When I say hard, I mean really, really hard. It was the time that I became fully aware of what it meant to have CF emotionally and psychologically. It was a time when my "peers" were playing sports, gossiping about boys and making plans for the future. I, on the other hand, was learning about my genotype and what it meant about my chances of survival into my twenties and thirties. I was carrying the burden of wondering when this disease was going to gobble me up. I couldn't relate and I was in the depths of depression.

There was a boy at my high school who had cancer. Everyone seemed to have compassion for him...I think because they knew about what it meant to have cancer and they could see that he was ill by looking at his bald head. I don't think many people knew about my illness for the first few years of high school. I'm not sure anyone ever asked me a single question about it even if they did know. I did not walk around with visual indicators of CF. I really felt like I couldn't relate to many people and their"problems". I had little patience. I became angry.

A couple months into my Junior year I developed a very serious case of mono, which ended up complicating my CF. I slept about 23 hours per day. I missed several months of school. During my absence I got several cards from classmates who never, ever acknowledged me as a classmate up until this point. I appreciated the thoughts, but would have rather had these people acknowledge me before it got to this point where they felt sorry for me. It did not feel genuine.

When not sleeping, I had TONS of time to think, while on this hiatus from school. I honestly think I had an awakening that I'm not sure I would have had if I wasn't so ill. I decided I had to get "unstuck" from my grief and despair. I was still alive after all! If I had one year or 20 years, I had to do what I could to make the most of that time. One thing that is true of most CFer's I have met is that we are among some of the most resilient humans alive. I came back to school that winter with a totally changed attitude. I improved my behavior and improved my grades. After all, I now planned on building a future, for however long it would last. I decided to head to college and become a social worker, with the goal of helping people cope with illnesses. Stay tuned for my next post, which will discuss CF in early adulthood.

I think the biggest thing I learned during my high school years was that I could rise above the depths of my emotion, and I became a stronger person for it. I think I also learned a lesson about genuineness, and how important it is to be kind to others. After all, you never know what that person is coping with inside.

As I prepare to be admitted to the hospital for a few days next week to have my PICC line placed, then to do a 2-3 week course of IV antibiotics at home I am reminded of these high school days. I am fighting the thoughts of despair with every fiber of my being right now. Is this the beginning of my decline? What's going to happen to my babies? Will it hurt? I am allowing myself 10 minutes of stinkin' thinkin' like this each day. I am continually reminding myself that I am so very lucky to have been given these years that I was told were not going to be mine to have at a young age. I'm alive, after all! I truly am blessed ;-)