Quality of Life Can Serve as the Ultimate Motivator

So if you’ve been following the blog for the past couple of weeks, you’d know that I haven’t been feeling well. In fact I feel HORRENDOUS right now. I’ve definitely got some brain fog going, so this should be an interesting post.

My little running journey was off to a GREAT start. I was feeling the best I had been in awhile, and then disaster struck.

As it turns out, I had a respiratory virus, not strep like I thought.

I’ve gotten to the point with my CF where these little respiratory viruses can have a harsh impact on my overall health. No matter what I do, it seems like they trigger a pulmonary exacerbation every time without fail.

I was all over tea and immune supporting vitamins last week, along with antibiotics to protect my lungs. Not only did I want to get better (obviously), but I also wanted to go to Boston this past weekend for the BC-Notre Dame football game.

On Friday I was faced with a tough decision: go to Boston for the weekend or stay home and try to rest up?

I was feeling like shit, I knew I really wasn’t going to get too much better and I had a strong sense that IVs would be in my future. On the other hand, how could I miss this trip (not to mention I had already booked a hotel room and bought tickets to the game)?

Decision-making moments come up like this ALL the time for me. I’d venture to guess the same is true for other people with CF and chronic illness. I once talked about that in my FOMO blog.

It can feel like these kinds of situations aren’t fair, or that whoever is pulling the strings is mean. Ultimately I don’t think life necessarily has to be fair. I know I was working hard with my little running thing, treatments and every other part of my life, yet there I was faced with another do or don’t decision. It was just a shitty bounce, that’s all.

In the end I felt like regardless of my decision to go to Boston, I was going to end up on IV, so I said, f*ck it, and went.

Generally I am really aggressive with my CF care. If something is off, I am on top of it within 24 hours, but this time around felt like I could allow myself the opportunity to live a little. After all living life is the only thing that makes the struggle with CF worth it.

BC-Notre Dame is always a great time. Even though we suck (it’s really the dumbest rivalry ever – we always get our asses kicked), campus surges and the tailgating never fails to be a great time – I also love seeing my friends from college and being on campus. College was the only time in my life when I felt totally free. I’ve been dealing with a bit of a health decline since, so it’s nice to get up there and remember what those days felt like (minus the drinking part – had even a drop of alcohol touched my lips this weekend, I’d probably be in a place where I wouldn’t be able to write this blog).

It was definitely a good idea to go back to school for the game. I may feel like shit right now, but I did all the things I wanted to do, even if I spent half the trip doing treatments in my hotel room while my girlfriend was probably bored out of her mind. She was a trooper.

Friday was manageable. I’ve obviously felt shitty in the past, so I knew how to handle it. Saturday was the tough day. It was game day, so it was obviously going to be a long day of being on my feet, but it just happened to be the hottest day in recorded history. I felt like I was standing on a frying pan all day. Simply put, it didn’t do wonders for my health. By the end of the game I was sunburned (Levaquin will do that), feverish and completely exhausted. On top of all that, I had the 4 hour drive on each end of the trip. It was a lot.

In fact, here’s a snapshot of my life over a 24-hour period from the 4^th quarter of the game on Saturday to when I got home last night and started IV antibiotics:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZH86LTFL7t/?taken-by=esiason17g