Day X

During the fisrt five months I managed to hide my disease and a deep love developped between the two of us. Unfortunately I started realizing that my endurance and energy decreased again and because my girlfried didn't have a clue she couldn't understand. When she wanted to take walks or go biking I always told her that I didn't feel like doing that stuff and that I'd rather stay at home. She probably thought that I was just being lazy.

Beginning of December it was finally time I told her. We have just been out for a short walk and on the way home I was breaking down. Every five minutes I had to pause and finally I couldn't walk any farther. She went getting the car and picked me up. In the evening I had to tell the truth. And it was a sad truth... I told her that I suffer from Cystic Fibrosis and explained briefly what it affects and involves. There was no time to go into detail and I asked her not to contact Mr Google because Google provides the heavy, out of context truth including all the scientific facts and life expectation etc.

Maybe I should have left out that last warning because usually telling someone not to do it leads to the exact opposite. Of course she couldn't resist. She was completely broken down when I saw her the next day and calming her down took quite a while. I told her that lucky enough I was having a light version of the disease and that she shouldn't generalize the whole thing. You have to look at each patient individually and you shouldn't be fixated on life expectation figures. A very difficult conversation, I can tell you!

The fact that I had to go again for an inpatient IV therapy the next day didn't make things better. We had to cancel our trip to Salzburg in Austria and instead of that long trip my girlfriend now travelled every evening to the hospital. (That shouldn't be the last time that we had to change plans with Salzburg. On the second try we actually travalled to Salzburg but my girlfriend got sick there and we had to return. Apparently Salzburg doesn't want to have visitors with a malfunctioning salt household ;-)) Well, lucky enough I recovered once again very quickly and after many many talks my girlfriend got used to the fact that I had a genetic disease.