Top 10 misconceptions about those of us with CF

Here are the Top 10 things you might not know about someone with CF (Humorous):

10. When people play tennis, they develop tennis elbow. We people with CF develop CF Shoulder. That's the pain we get in our shoulder from traveling with our 25 pound therapy machine. I actually develop scratches from it. I don't know if it really affects my tennis game as much as tennis elbow.

9. When you have CF and you travel, you are immediately linked to terrorism. I say that because your machine is checked at security for no less than 10 minutes. People look at you funny like "How could you?," "I hope he's not getting on my plane," and "They got you, you bastard!" We look at you saying, "It's just to help me breathe! Geez!"

8. When you finish doing your vest, people may think you're being abused. I have marks all over my body because of how the vest grabs tightly around me. It looks like I've been caned.

7. Those of us with CF have a bulge in our pockets a lot of times. It's not because we're happy to see you. It's because we have a pill bottle. We might be happy to see you but please know the bulge is just coincidence.

6. If you see smoke coming from our room, please don't assume that we are smoking a couple of packs a day or even that we're "pot heads." That's just our aerosols. It looks even stranger when we're driving.

5. When you see an adult in a children's hospital by himself, don't think the worst of that person. It may just be that there is not an adult CF center available to us as for many years we were only able to go to children's hospitals to see a doctor who specializes in CF. Now if Chris Hanson confronts us, that's another story altogether.

4. If you hear from a hospital room, "Blow, blow, blow, come on, blow! Take it all in!", get your mind out of the gutter. We're doing our pulmonary function tests.

3. If you see us going to the bathroom and then coming out 30 seconds later, I promise that we are not having bladder issues and that we are washing our hands. It's just that we're not really using the bathroom. We're spitting phlegm into the toilets. Not that that's any more pleasant.

2. If you hear us talking about how much we enjoy our vests because when we were little our parents hit us all the time, don't call DFCS. Our parents had to do postural drainage on our backs, sides and fronts to loosen the phlegm in our lungs. Now that the vest is available, we don't need our parents' assistance anymore.

1. And finally, if there's a sign on our door that says, "When the room's a rockin', don't come a knockin!", don't get the wrong idea. We are just doing our therapy.

I hope you guys enjoyed this.

Andy