I've decided that while I'm not invincible, death won't cross my mind too often. If I find myself dwelling on it, pretty soon I'm looking up other people with Cystic Fibrosis on social media. I scare myself when I find out a quarter of the profiles are of dead people, and over another half are nearing death. That stuff is branded into my brain for life. I start to think that I'm next, even though that is irrational and far from the truth. I don't look sickly like 90% of the CF population. I don't feel sick. I don't act sick. I don't like to think about my disease. I don't use my disease for pity points, which by the way, a lot of people in the CF community unfortunately do. 

Instead, I don't dwell on my disease unless it's causing me issues. Sure, I treat it everyday and make sure to take precautions to stay healthy, but I don't let it run my life. If I did, I wouldn't be in a very good place right now. It does run certain aspects of my life. I take a minimum of three huge bags for just a weekend-long trip, which have a combined weight of at least 80 pounds. I do have to take a handful of pills with every meal and snack I eat, and more pills to treat my disease in other ways. I do have to keep my lungs clear and breathing, and am expected to get my heart racing for at least an hour a day (which, I honestly don't get it to race for that long many days, mostly because I don't have much time, and I despise running since I find it boring and pointless. But God often lets things happen that will get my heart racing so I can meet that daily goal. More stories for other days), so I find it hard to sit still for longer than an hour.

But I have to give CF credit where it's due. CF has unlocked doors to many blessings and cool experiences. It has allowed me to complete my last year of high school at home, reducing the probability of me getting sick and making it so much easier to take care of myself. It has made me want to pursue extreme and exhausting sports, such as freestyle motocross, paintball, and hunting, and has toughened me up to the point where I hardly feel pain when I should. When I do suffer an injury that causes me to limp or hold something, I laugh, brag, and make jokes about it. But best of all, Cystic Fibrosis has led me to believe in God, which is a massive topic in itself. Without CF, I'd just be another cookie-cutter person in a cookie-cutter society, and that wouldn't have been the best thing ever.