Category: Life
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The Good of Ills #3: A Place of Rest
I’m sitting in hospital as I write this. For the last 10 years the odds of my words reaching you while holed up in a hospital were high. In fact let me share a hot writing tip with you; struggling to find a chance to focus and hit that deadline? Search out a quiet corner…
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Tinder dates from a West London hospital
And now for something a little different. I’m writing a book, yup a real actual book with all the words in it. The working title is: Professional Sick Girl – The untold and unexpected lessons of a lifelong illness. Below is a short extract that explores some of the realities of luurve with a health condition.…
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Why we must talk about illness when it isn’t life or death
I want to take a minute to tell you why Professional Sick Girl exists. It’s true, I like to write; it’s my way of connecting with the world around me. But the reason I write about the things I do is to raise the profile of people with chronic illnesses, and the many different lives…
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The Jekyll and Hyde life
Hooo boy. Illness. It is quite the ice breaker at a party. When I meet a new person I like to tell them at least once that I have a life- threatening lung condition. Sometimes I like to chat about the four different types of broad-spectrum potent antibiotics I’m on at any one time. If…
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A false start
The truth is I don’t particularly like to talk about it when I’m having a hard time. Actually, let me rephrase that, I don’t like to share on the internet with total strangers when I’m too whacked to get out of bed for a week and look like I’m still recovering from an epic NYE…
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The Tale of the CF Cinderella
Do you ever just stop and take a minute, to think about which Disney heroine you might have been in another life? Like many a millennial I often seek to take inspiration from Walt and shoehorn my experiences into the relevant cartoon princess. Say, If I were to sum up the experience of having Cystic Fibrosis…
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Sweet love
It was late. The lights were dimmed. I stared at him. He stared right back. It was always special, but something felt different tonight. He leaned in and I felt my hands get clammy. Up close his eyes were huge. The blood was rushing to my head, all thoughts gone. The butterflies were dancing. Was…
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A lesson in vulnerability
Or, that time I mentioned my wheezy-hamster-lungs in an interview. Unsurprisingly having a life-shortening illness can make you feel a tad vulnerable at times. It can also make you feel like a superhero when you defy the odds. But there’s one context that has always made me feel more vulnerable about having Cystic Fibrosis than…
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Health is everything
Good health is everything. So some people believe. As humans we structure our needs in that well-known colloquialism of ‘[insert life changing challenge e.g. having no job or experiencing a divorce] …but hey at least I have my health’. I would argue that having no job or experiencing the break up of a…
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An appeal at the eleventh hour
It’s that time of year again. Oh, you thought I meant the election? Well, yes. But it’s also around about the time of year I end up in hospital for a 14 day course of intravenous antibiotics to treat the underlying and continuous infection in my lungs. By Cystic Fibrosis standards this is nothing; it’s…
Professionalsickgirl 