"I Think I Know You," She Said...

(I could lie about this answer)

this sir won’t mind if I spit the truth

I am about to write something that is possibly going to make some people very mad at me....

And I REALLY hope you can read the following with a kind and gentle heart because I am no trying to clickbae bait you.

I could lie about this answer because someone was kind enough to ask me how to follow the 6 Feet Apart rule if you're someone with CF and doesn't know if anyone in the world around you has CF also at any given time. I could tell you that I've never been around someone with CF....

Or I could do what I always try to do as a writer and just tell the truth.

This will maybe be disappointing to read, especially because I want to be a "role model" whenever I can and it's in my power to do.

But if I’m really being honest: I’ve met friends with CF before.

when you have a dream performance in NY made even better by seeing longtime cyster friends again

We don't just go ham and frolick in the sun without doing our due, of course. We will say “What are you growing right now?” and if someone is struggling with one of the more deadly bacterias or recently on IVs or something, we will try to push the date, or maybe not even meet at all. Typically though, we will quickly hash out if any of us have super bugs at the moment, and sometimes, in the past, wear masks.

This is another reason why the hatred towards many of us during the pandemic felt so confusing. (Hear me out for a second before you hit ‘unfollow’. Kindly give me one deep breathe - something many with CF can't do, lol to us, lol to us- and journey through this speed history lesson ONLY for the history sake of it, if nothing else!)

For those with CF or a variant akin, we have to wear masks when we are on the CF floor because we never know when we will walk right by another patient with CF who might be taking a lap and it’s policy (the rules of being there)... anyone who enters our room has to wear a mask and full paper gown because most of the staff just came from another patient's room, so they don't want to carry something from them to us... And, the science of 2-meters is commonplace for us, so nothing that happened in 2020 felt weird at all.

Since so many kids who'd been getting worse after CF sleepaway camp saw firsthand what not being close to another coughing sicko could do for them, it was just like "hashtag-shrug". What felt weird, however, was that, all of a sudden, something that had been a lingo-laden lifestyle when in the slammer was now a source of aggression and trolling.

The irony is that many people who grew up with CF come from all political and social walks of life, but most had a CF wing or post-transplant process that suggested masks, and/or surgeons who wear them. So it’s not like every person with CF wore masks during the Pandamn. Many didn’t… But the establishment of it as a basis for prevenative care was still in the experiential history books. So many of us were just like, "Whoa. I invented this in the 1980s", you know?

So even if you like to scream "face diaper" at people (we all have our hobbies), at least you can understand why it was so confusing for those who'd been following those medical protocols for so long. That would be kinda weird if it were you, right?

But there is one thing I should do even less than make myself the target of whomever is now going to keep trying to fight the 2020s in my DMs post ‘this post’: Admitting that I've willingly met other people with CF.

Sometimes, it happens by accident. I was in the ER (of all places) just a couple of months ago and someone in scrubs was nearby, working on their chart while I was explaining my painful J-tube issues to triage.

After the triage nurse got up to go get something, the beautiful scrubs-Barbie leaned over and asked, "Do you sometimes share online or something... Are you a writer? Or did you used to maybe vlog?"

"I did vlog, yes!" I said, feeling a little embaressed that I used to vlog (even though I've been thinking a lot lately about doing so again because I loved the video editing side of things but... That's why I just need to finally make a documentary).

"I think I know you," she said... And it turns out, as I've written about here once before (so apologies for repeating myself but it's such a good example of running into another person with CF in the wild): she had once seen our old YouTube videos or something along those lines, and was happy they existed as someone with CF, while I was happy she existed because working in healthcare as someone vulnerable to bacteria is a Marvel superhero level of move.

"I'm very lucky," she said modestly, which is something any of us say when we mean, 'I have a mutation that didn't wipe me out by 16' and that's what's wild: There are more of us than we think out there who are lucky... Even when we are talking about being lucky while sitting in a hospital ER right before I was shifted to the CF floor for the night; Something that other people would think "unlucky".

Which do I feel? And what happened when I met a CF person out in public unexpectedly, when we aren't supposed to be close to each other?

Since I'm trying to change my mindset to be "more positive" this month (bad time for a barf emoji?), I fear I should conclude this week-long storytelling series by answering this final question [eventually] that I'm going to pose to YOU right now.

And the question I'm asking you is this:

What is a health rule you've broken before and why?

Part Three. More Tomorrow. (Last Part!)

THANK YOU my Word Nerd friends and to all those helping this independent memoirist continue to work by upgrading to paid (which also helps my goal of gifting my every-weekday-writing for anyone who asks for a reading scholarship, no questions asked)….