My Journey with Pulmonary Fibrosis

One week from today, Christmas will be fading away for another year. It will be over, for all intents and purposes, packed away for another twelve months!  All the fun, the preparing, shopping, wrapping, getting the perfect gifts, all comes down at this point to be seven days away.  The stress of it all!  I still have a small amount of shopping to do, in between more doctor visits, babysitting little ones in our family, getting our home "ready" for the holiday meal....and   oooops.....I haven't even started baking the cookies my adult children still look forward to every Christmas.....Moms Ginger Cream Cookies....I'll get to it somehow!

I wouldn't take anything for all the stress, the happiness, the excitement and ok.....a little fatigue thrown in for good measure!  My first Christmas, after having had been diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis, as I was putting stockings away, so they would be fresh and unwrinkled for the next year, I slipped something into each persons stocking that they would find on their own twelve months down the raod!

Oh, I cried as I wrote each of my children, my husband and grandchildren notes, from me to them to find the next year.  I had been given such dire prognosis that April in 2002, it seemed almost impossible to hope that I would be around for the next holiday, so I planned a way to make it easier for my family to be able to have it without me there.  I told each person an example of how they had blessed me, told them I would always be near, and how I loved them so much.  Then I told each one how they had brought such joy to me in their lifetimes and cited examples here and there.....I could almost hear them laughing across the months as they were to read them the next Christmas. 

Christmas 2003, 2004, 2005 and now 2006 have come to invite me to stay awhile still and I try to make each added one very special for my family, I'm so greatful to be able to still be here with them.  I have those letters put aside, knowing they will be found one day, in the right time.  But now, I try to keep enough energy to get through parts of every day, and often have to swoope down and pick up a two year old running to jump into my arms and my heart sings with peace and joy!

The doctor visits aren't going real well....seems I will soon have to have a ventilator of sorts at home to use off and on during the day when I need assistance breathing.  I had been having some pain in my back, across the right lung. It turned out to be the diaphraghm.  It is getting weaker and tired. The doctor checked it out and said my body is getting tired of working so hard to get oxygen to me and a non-invasive ventilator will help me not be so tired while forcing oxygen into my lungs with no help from me....that is the assumption anyway!   We will see how it works :)

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• #1 Comment from pharmolo 
  12/19/06 11:19 AM | Permalink

  Hello Jan,
  
  Merry Christmas and all the best for 2007, in as good a health as is medically possible. I'm sorry to hear that you may need aid in breathing, but I remember when you went on your holiday that you needed to carry a huge supply of oxygen cylinders, so it doesn't come as a big surprise.
  
  Keep writing, and again, all the best to you and yours,
  
  Guido
  http://journals.aol.co.uk/pharmolo/NorthernTrip