Breathing Deeply: My Life With Cystic Fibrosis

This weekend, Saturday actually, was quite a busy one. Every five years for my grandparents' anniversary, our whole family gets together to take a portrait. This year the designated "call time" was 8:00 am. Brad and I had driven up the night before and stayed at a Holiday Inn. It turned out my cousin and her family were staying there too. It was fun to see them for a few minutes before all the busyness of the photo session.



Since we all need to color-coordinate for the photo, preparing for this event generally involves a shopping trip or two to find the right clothes in the right colors and the right style. This year we were all pretty casual. The colors were blue and brown, which meant jeans and khakis for the most part. My mom took a few photos in addition to what the photographer took.

After the photo session we all ate brunch together at Grandpa and Grandma's house. It wasn't anything fancy. Mostly a lot of quiche-like foods and some muffins. Following brunch we had some down time. Brad and I went back to the hotel for a couple hours. He used the time to play with his computer (hooray for free wi-fi at hotels) and I took the opportunity to get in a nap. I knew I was going to be crabby if I didn't get a few more winks. I had a rough night of sleep the night before because my rib was really aching. I couldn't sleep on my right side, which is my usual side.

After my nap it was time to head over to Auntie's house for more festivities. This time it was a baby shower for Dana. I still can't really wrap my head around the fact that my little sis is pregnant. She makes it look easy. For a gift I made a crib blankie that had monkies on it and some green and brown coordinating fabrics for the border. It's one of the best blankies I've made so far and I was proud to give it to her.

Once the shower was over it was time to go back to the hotel to pick up Brad so we could drive home. On the way we stopped at Mandarin Garden for dinner. I wanted Brad to experience their food since I'd already had it and enjoyed it a few times. He agreed that it was every bit as good as Peking Palace, perhaps even more so. Unfortunately it's all the way up in Mira Mesa, so we can't really make it "our place." It's a good half hour drive from home. As an alternative, we've decided that Mandarin Garden will be our new place to stop when we're driving back through the area.

This morning I woke up in quite a bit more pain than yesterday (remember my aching rib?) I was absolutely convinced that it was broken so I hauled myself to Urgent Care to get it checked out. The good news is that it's not really broken, but I do have a large what's called a "bone bruise" on that spot. The bad news is, just as if it had been broken, I'm looking at a 4 to 6 week recovery time. The Urgent Care doc got in touch with my CF doc and they decided that what I needed was an incentive spirometer and a good strong dose of pain meds. I was already on pain meds for arthritis, but that wasn't helping my rib so they prescribed something stronger. Looks like I'll be taking it easy at the gym for the next month. Bummer. Just when things were getting good.