It's been a while...

Sorry about the absence ,but cf hasn't been the only thing that I’ve been battling for the past few months. Starting in the pandemic the mental strain that was thrown at me was something I had never experienced before. I’ve always been able to take whatever surgerys, picc lines, and tough bacterias that were thrown my way, but nothing prepared me for what I would experience coming out of the pandemic. On top of what seemed like the never ending hospitalizations and being accused of not taking care of myself throughout the pandemic, I had baseball, friends, and any kind of social interaction snatched away in what seemed like a few weeks. Lashing out in anger at random times and always feeling numb while I was being admitted drowning in my own mucus every other month because no answers could be found. It takes a toll on a person and especially on a person that shook off mental awareness as a joke up until it wasn’t. Fast forward to the fall of 2021 I took up a new hobby. Doing weed. The hospitalizations were not going down and I was being asked to work so much I was coming home and skipping treatments. The more sick I got the more weed I did. It helped me ignore the very prominent mental and physical issues that had surrounded me for the past 2 years. My parents didn't know how to help and I was a ship going down much faster than I had realized. Skipping meds unless I was in the hospital ,and struggling even more the closer I got to the end of the year because weed was beginning to not be enjoyable. It was just another thing I did. My mental health was killing me fast. Not taking antidepressants and my adhd meds, skipping breathing treatments on the daily. It took a toll on the people watching me do it everyday, my parents. January 2022, I was kicked out in hopes of a much needed wake up call. It took me until February to realize what I had done. It was like I woke up. I Started taking my Lexapro and Strattera consistently again and finally realized what I had been doing. Almost half a year of fog because my dependency had become so great that I didn’t know what to do without it. Couldn’t sleep without it, couldn’t function or concentrate, couldn’t feel healthy. Looking back on the entire mental struggle I will say that I would like to see the CF community and foundation do something about this. I’d like to think that I’m not the only person with a chronic illness that struggled with these obstacles. I wish there were more resources for cf families so these issues could be troubleshooted faster and addressed. A much needed change needs to happen otherwise the mental health of people with chronic illnesses will continue to suffer. I hope that we can create a plan so less people have to go through this experience.