Breathing Deeply: My Life With Cystic Fibrosis

CFers and food. It's a relationship that those who live beyond the perimeter of CFland fail to appreciate and all to often, misunderstand. For CFers, the old addage "you are what you eat" rings quite true. Eat a fatty meal such as poultry, dripping with grease, served in a bucket, and without doubt we too will be smelling fowl [sic] and wiping at an oil slick or two.

Not all our encounters with food need to be distressing. In fact, our ravenous appetites can instill a sense of awe and wonderment to outside observers. The experience is heightened all the more when a CFer of smallish, seemingly fragile frame can readily consume approximately half his or her body weight with precious little effort and a rather impish gleam in the eye.

Perhaps the greatest experience to be shared between CFers and our friends of sturdier pancreatic constitution is when the two groups come together for a shared meal. A CFer's home is a place of feasting. Nary an empty cupboard to be found there! The question of which side dish to serve is replaced with the more appropriate "how many side dishes to serve." Ultimately, the answer is "however many the CFer wants to eat." No one ever leaves hungry from the table of a CFer. A CFer always plans for leftovers. After all, getting all those calories ingested in one day should hardly involve needless expenditures of energy.

The next time your friends or acquaintances suggest getting together, why not offer to prepare dinner for the lot of you? Serve up something fantastic, (preferably buffet style so it doesn't cause your kitchen table to collapse,) then sit back and let the ooh's and ahh's waft before you like the mist from your nebulizer. You'll be the hero of the day.

(But don't forget to take your enzymes!)