All of this freedom was too much for me at first. So many opportunities opened up before me. I no longer lived in the shadow of death, so I could actually take my time instead of rushing through life. I grew up being told that my life would be significantly shorter than my peers’, and my quality of life would be too horrible for me to hold down a career. But, Trikafta changed all of that. Suddenly, I would live just as long as my peers, and be healthy enough to hold down almost any career I wanted.
My midlife crisis at eighteen was now a typical identity crisis. I had a lot of years ahead of me before I went through my actual midlife crisis. I had time to slow down and screw around a bit. I had the time and energy to attend college in-person and go to work at the same time. I could maintain relationships without fear of my condition getting in the way. I was no longer limited to working a shitty office-style job at home. I could do literally anything. Well, for the most part anyway. I couldn’t do anything that involved deep-sea diving or working with dangerous contagious diseases. But, I could do anything else. It was up to me to choose what I wanted to. The options were endless.
I wasn’t ready for any of this. I didn’t believe Trikafta would make my life much different. Its cousins, Symdeko and Orkambi, did great things for me, but my life was still relatively the same while I was taking them. But, Trikafta blew all of my expectations out of the water, and changed my life in tremendous ways! I was literally living in a new body that worked almost completely normally! How crazy is that?!
But, with the good, came a lot of hardship too. Due to the grief over my childhood and extreme, rapid changes, I slipped into a deep depression. It was all too much for me to cope with, and I mentally shut down.
It felt like I spent every day wading through molasses. It became very difficult, if not impossible, for me to think clearly or focus on anything for long. I spent a lot of my time just staring blankly into space, feeling and thinking absolutely nothing. It was scary. I seriously thought I was descending into lunacy. In desperation, I told everyone in my immediate circle what was going on with me, hoping they knew what was wrong with me and how to help me before I reached a point of no return. I really didn’t know what was wrong with me. I’d dealt with depression before, but it was nothing like I was currently experiencing.
My therapist bluntly told me that I wasn’t going crazy. I was perfectly sane. I was just in a deep state of depression, which was entirely understandable and very fixable. She expected that would happen to me after going on Trikafta, and told me she’d be much more concerned if I didn’t fall into that pit of depression upon experiencing all the life-changing effects of Trikafta. She knew I was riddled with grief and anxiety. I was grieving the childhood CF stole from me, and terrified of what the future had in store for me. She also knew exactly how to help me. It would take a long time, but I’d eventually crawl out of my pit of anxiety and depression, and my new life could truly begin.
Following my therapist’s advice, I got on medication, developed a stable, productive routine, regularly exercised, kept my house and bedroom clean and organized, and continued to pamper myself with healthy, delicious meals and snacks. Over time, I did feel better. I didn’t get better over night, and some days were way better than others. But, for every step back I took, I took two steps forward. Soon, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and got excited to live my life in a completely different body.
The first week while I was on Trikafta, I endured severe physical health issues as my body purged eighteen years worth in mucus from my body, and changed the anatomy of each and every one of my cells so they’d work better. I spent the first two months on Trikafta doing something similar mentally. I was “purging” my past from my mind. I was in the process of being reborn. I had to shed all the old things to make room for the new things. I had to break lifelong habits and replace them with new habits. That was an incredibly difficult process, and is something I’m still dealing with all these months later. But, as soon as I got through the worst of my physical illness and mental illness, words cannot describe the joy I began to feel in my soul, and just how physically useful my body now was.
