I've touched on this briefly in a few of my past articles but Cystic Fibrosis is more than just the "simple" lung infections and digestive problems. It seems as if the older you get, the stronger your fight has to become. In this article, I'm going to talk a little about these extra things I've had to deal with. There are a few things like osteoporosis which affects 57% of adult CF patients and liver disease (32%) that I'm not going to talk about because I have not been affected by them but, I'm just throwing those out there.

The first one is growing as a kid. With CF, your pancreas doesn't like to work properly - to put it simply. It doesn't produce enzymes that digest fat and proteins which ends up causing malabsorption. If you don't take a set amount of enzymes with each meal, it's almost like you didn't eat at all. When I was age 12, I weighed 54 lbs. My doctors told me (or more so my parents at this age) that If I didn't gain weight within the month, I'd need a permanent feeding tube. Permanent. That word terrified me and still does. Within that year, I had gained 30 lbs with a lot of perseverance and the help of growth hormone shots every day. Yeah, that stuff you hear all the athletes getting in trouble for using-it's a lifesaver to those who actually need it. But sometimes, it doesn't always work for everyone. About 10-20% of people with Cystic Fibrosis have some sort of feeding tube.

Due to the pancreas not being able to process fats etc. some vitamins are lost in this process as well. These specifically are A, D, E and K. When you have CF you can become deficient in these vitamins. For me, there was a time my vitamin A was so low it was basically non-existant. I never really noticed it's effect until I started driving at night. The deficiancy happened when I was about 14 or 15 and to this day in my 20's, I'm partially night blind.

Another is diabetes. CF-related diabetes which is a combination of type 1 and 2 - but more type 1 typically. That's the thing though. Cystic Fibrosis related diabetes is different than diabetes and it's different in each patient. I can't stress enough. CF-related diabetes IS NOT type 1 or 2. I have had a few medical professionals tell me not to listen to my CF doctor and that in order to get rid of diabetes I needed to go on a strict diet. They don't understand it's specific to CF and it wasn't caused by our diet; it's because our pancreas just decides to partially work sometimes and completely give up others. One day, in the span of two hours, my blood sugars ranged from 64-501. Some days, I'll need insulin every time I eat and somedays, I have to keep sugar with me everywhere I go because even though I hadn't touched my insulin pen in days, I'd have constant lows.

Kidneys. With CF, you're admitted for IV antibiotics very frequently. A lot of the antibiotics used to treat our lung infections are incredibly strong, sometimes even being in the chemotherapy range. In the hospital, myself and every other CF patient I know have to get blood drawn at least every other day to watch kidney levels. This was never a problem for me - until it was.

I went from being in the hospital for my normal IV antibiotics, for about the 25th time in my life, to being in kidney failure in less than 48 hours. I was in the hospital for 4 weeks after that, 4 days of that is completely lost due to memory loss and due to how high the toxicity in my body because my kidneys were getting worse. Yeah, that was a part of CF I didn't know even existed until after it happened.

Mental health. As you can imagine, CF has a tendency to make you feel like that's your whole life. It tries to define you and that can make a huge impact on mental health. Due to the sensitivity of this topic, I'm going to avoid getting too much into it because I don't want to speak for all CF patients. But I will tell my latest way that I've been clearing my head when of the "CF Life" for as long as you can. I go to the movies. It may seem like something so simple but I am a huge movie lover-in the living room movies and theater. I've recently been going to the theater because living in a dorm, if I'm trying to clear my head from CF, sitting beside all my medical equipment isn't really the way to do that.

This week I've seen "The Greatest Showman" and "Love, Simon" which-besides making me cry - inspired me. Just in general life, not just in a CF sense. To all the CFers reading this: maybe movies aren't your thing. Maybe the song in "The Greatest Showman" that makes my heart drop and chills go all over my body while my eyes start to tear up makes you say, "Why is she yelling so loud? Oh, that's Cece from "Shake It Up" and Troy Bolton from "High School Musical." Cool... You know this popcorn needs more butter." That's perfectly fine. Find something that is your escape. Find something inspiring. Find something that makes you comfortable with who you are.