The Philosophical Phenomenon

I was in second grade when Shea was born. I remember I brought her in for show and tell and showed her off to my whole class. I thought she was perfect - she was little and cuddly and adorable - although she had many medical problems from the start, she was born with Cystic Fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis manifests itself in many ways, some people get really sick in their lungs, some in their digestive system, some people hardly have symptoms at all. I was always really sick with m

I want to start by saying, January 31st will never be “my” day. Never. At least not to me. In fact - although my family says they like it - it makes me kind of upset that today was the day I got a lung transplant. Somehow I feel it takes away from my sisters death. Yeah, my living is more positive than her dying - but she deserves to be rejoiced and remembered. I don’t want today to be about me. There’s no way anyone who ever met her could ever forget her, but still. She was

When we are scared we have three reactions, fight, flight, or freeze. I’ve always been a fighter. I’ve always been stubborn and a know-it-all. I felt I had deserved the right to have control over my body, to make decisions over my body. I had spent my life asking questions and learning about my myself and my disease. Many times I have thought I knew more than the doctors taking care of me. I have always depended on myself to know what’s best for me, and I don’t often listen i

I always knew my physical body was just a vessel for my soul, carrying it, keeping it safe. I’ve often thought over the years how our consciousness is like an alien being attached to our human host; however, some of the human bodies we inhabit seem to work better than others. We can survive on this planet as an animal, as a human, but what about after our consciousness leaves our body behind? Will we no longer be bound by earthly things? Do we attach ourselves to some new bod

Dec, 2017 Dear Jobe, This is a letter I’ve been meaning to write for years, I just couldn’t muster the courage. What does a young mother say to her young son when she knows she will die long before she should? What does anyone say to comfort you? I wonder what questions you have, I wonder what fears you’re hiding, I wonder what demons you’re facing. Sometimes we talk about these things and as you get older the conversations get progressively deeper. Your sense of life and dea

It’s not quite seven am, on a… well, I’m not quite sure what day it is. The board on my wall says Monday, but I know it’s not Monday. My computer tells me it’s the 18th of April, but to know the day I would have to open my calendar and the day of the week doesn’t really matter that much to me. They all tend to be the same. I’m in a rehab facility trying to get stronger from a double lung transplant. In eight days I will have been in the hospital for five months. Five long, ar

I was sitting in the hospital trying to think of how to write about the experience that changed my life three years ago. However, I think I have decided I should write about how my life has changed recently. Currently, I sit in my ICU bed, looking out at all the doctors who are talking about me during their rounding this morning. I’m not sure I can see all of them, but there are at least 10-12 medical professionals. At least they offered to do it with the door open so I could