Breathing Deeply: My Life With Cystic Fibrosis

You have a cough? Go home tonight and eat a whole box of ExLax. Tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. --Pearl Williams

Usually when we do a conference call at work, we all sit in the conference room and use the same phone. Today I think I should have stayed in my own office and dialed in separately so that I would have the luxury of putting everything on "mute" whenever I needed to cough. My chest really aches today. My back does too and I'm not sure if it's from coughing so hard, or if I'm really tight, or if I slept in a funky position. Whatever the reason, it has been a very uncomfortable morning for me and I'm considering finishing up my work at home so that I can cough in peace.

Despite being uncomfortable, I'm in a pretty good mood today. My husband really perked me up last night by taking it upon himself to do some straightening up around the apartment while I rested. He even brought me a double-double from In-N-Out! We had planned to watch "According to Jim" together, but "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was on instead. This is the 40th anniversary of that Christmas special, and although it's cute and has a good lesson, I wasn't interested. I'd seen it more than 20 times growing up. We ended up watching "Fever Pitch" and then I busied myself with gift wrap while Brad watched one of those icky crime shows. Later I ended up zonking out on the couch for a little while, but then crawled in bed and Brad tucked me in with plenty of warm blankies. I don't even remember falling asleep.

I'm so glad that I have a flexible job that accommodates my need to adjust my work hours. So long as I'm getting in a full 8 hours, it doesn't matter so much when I do them. God has certainly blessed me by putting me here. I enjoy the work and am thankful for the variety of projects I've been able to do with my coworkers.