From the category archives:

Narrative

Barn Sunset

Soy Beans

Pills

This was the EASY part of packing

We were stressing over traveling up to Ohio this weekend with all of my medicine and medical supplies that included my $11,000 Vest and 4 days of Cayston and Pulmozyme, along with all of my other “less expensive” meds. Of course, we were also n more possible conflict with the needles needed to mix and draw out my colistin from its vials, so I was expecting a nightmare experience.

The morning before, I read up on everything on the Southwest site and the TSA site about traveling with medical disabilities and medical supplies. It seemed like it was all in our favor to be a breeze, so long as we declared early on that we were going to be a pain in the butt. I declared so early, the guy seemed annoyed that I mentioned that I had special medical equipment with me and the second guy said to just get in the line with everyone else.

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Balloon Over Pond

Dayton USAF Museum

Dayton USAF Museum - ©2010 Jesse Petersen

CelebrateIt’s been three months already, so it’s time to make my trek back to Tampa General to see if I’m still improving with age. My numbers have gone up since going completely compliant in March, so that trend should continue unless I’ve just come down with something this week with Beautiful being sick. The goal this visit is to blow a 40% FEV1 and a 42 would make me ecstatic (it’s a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” thing). She is coming with me on a very rare trip to clinic because she has to be at work at 8am and my clinic appointment is always at 7am. She just told them matter-of-factly that it is my clinic day and she is going with me. After work, she has an appointment with an ENT/Allergist to see what is ailing her.

I’ve seen a lot of clinic visits being posted and tweeted about with great results with my new-found friends with a couple of unfortunate hospitalizations and a bad case of c-diff. It almost seems like everyone is doing a better job taking care of themselves and the meds are working. Go figure!

It doesn’t come without sacrifice on one end or another, though. For us, it’s co-pays out the nose, making budgeting impossible. For others, it means being on disability (which means you darn well better be compliant if you’re just sitting at home, right, right?). For others, it’s just a hard life that I used to live with a split life of work, school, family, and treatments. I’ve only crossed off school from that list, but once you enter into the family part, it’s a whole new world.

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