anxiety attack...18 days

I think the meds are starting to work. I was whistling while making lunch today...always a good sign when you can suck in enough air and go about your lunch making duties. My mucus is like non -exsistant today and bright yellow. Here's to hoping these orals are enough to at least tide me over till I get back from Bdo's. It would be nice to avoid IV's all together till the summer. I woke up with an anxiety attack the other night, I had to check to see if my contacts were out, I had to get up and check my oxygen, I had to check my blood sugars...I had to check everything, something was not right, and I was starting to panic. I did not like this feeling at all....I then began to think that something was wrong with my lungs and I would stop breathing...I have a wickedly wild imagination that often runs away on me (although has helped me in my business creativly as well as drama program in my younger years...during the night with an anxiety attack, wild imaginations are not cool)...Finally I was able to fall back asleep after doing all those things and reading for a bit...

The book I'm reading now is set in the late 1800's about a woman suffering from tuberculous, or consumption as they called it. There is a description that really hit home for me. It made me think of what others see when I cough or someone else with CF coughs what it must be like for the other person watching through their eyes... "It was terrible. It was one of those times when the coughing was so violent, it was as though her lungs were tearing themselves apart in their attempt to escape her breasts. Phlegm and vomit - thin streaks of bloody tissue with it. she coughed and coughed and then her breath became so ratty and weak I thought she must faint, surely, if only for a moments relief"...yikes welcome to the world of a coughing attack described to a tee.
Another interesting point in this book was that the woman has to travel to Egypt to get away from the cold weather. "Lady Duff Gordon will not survive another winter in England.I would never have thought that one could die from the weather, no matter how miserable and grey it might be, but another winter will murder my lady."
Even in the 1800's they knew enough to send people to warmer climates for lung disease. I think we got it right with Barbados...this past week it has been exceptionally cold. Every time I go outside the coldness creeps into my bones and my lungs seize in their breath intake. This -10 feels like -20 weather is not working out for me anymore...18 days till Barbados.