Feeling ill, but not for long.

It's my turn to cough this week. My lungs feel like they are on fire, like a huge itch on the inside. It's funny how when you're well, the idea of a sofa day, while your husband takes the kids out and you have rare custody of the remote, seems quite welcoming. What you forget is just how sucky it feels to be ill. 

For me, this is just a little insight. I slept for 12 hours last night (albeit it coughing the whole time, my body kindly allowed me to sleep in-between). Tonight I will have inactivity induced insomnia even though I still feel tired. But I know others who live this feeling, day in, day out. When climbing up the stairs becomes a struggle, and drug induced nausea makes even the small joy of eating an enemy. 

I think I allow myself this little fantasy where all the love, and treatments, and family, and creativity, and fun, and friends, and action, and fresh air, and hoodies with that soft fleecy inside, and hot chocolate...  all of this and more will somehow really save him from ever feeling that bad. But I guess even I must concede that just occasionally he will feel pretty damn crappy, and what I feel right now is just a fraction of that. 

I know that the chances are I will wake up tomorrow and feel better. I'll get outside and breathe down that bitter cold air into my lungs, and feel cleansed. If not, I'll feel rubbish a couple more days, get down the doctors, who may or may not give me some antibiotics, and I'll recover at a slightly slower rate. But I will recover. Even if this bug leaves me any long term damage, lowering my lung function, I'll probably never know nor notice. Whereas for people with CF, just one more infection might be the one that chips off that extra 10% that they couldn't afford to lose. 

And while they live their lives, and do their treatments, and go to school, or work, and all with the knowledge that their current infection may be irreversibly damaging their lungs, they will be doing all that feeling pretty damn crappy at the same time. 

So no, to those people that have said to me, 'oh I know how you feel, my son/daughter had flu last week and coughed for days' it is not the same (But I still feel for you, flu sucks too). 

On a brighter note, the kids are featured on the Starlight website right now. Which you can read here.

And here  is a link for my CF friends, which has cheered me up today. I hope it does you too.  

Good night all. Stay well x