My husband has Cystic Fibrosis, and there are times when even I can’t relate to what he’s going through. He’s young, he’s healthy-looking, and he loses two hours a day to respiratory therapy treatments, avoids the stairs when he’s already short of breath, and causes huge backups at the airport trying to get his therapy equipment through security.

I agree with Jim Pietrangelo - any time you have to deal with issues like these every day you learn to rely on your sense of humor. Otherwise, you’ll have to learn to rely on antidepressants

Noel Guinane said:

I see what you’re saying, but if I was disabled, I would accept I was disabled. All of us have natural rights which doesn’t mean we are all born equal. We’re not. Some are born rich and privileged, or are brainier, more talented, or just luckier. Being disabled is a disability. I might not like it, but there it is.

Heh. If I don’t like it, at some level, I’m not accepting it, am I? My husband’s accepted his CF, but when some moron tells him he should cut back on the cigarettes because of his CF-induced cough, it’s not a matter of acceptance, it’s a matter of frustration, sometimes embarassment, and sometimes just, “Why me?” We’re not all born equal, but it’s that inequality that causes us to strive to be better — even when sometimes it’s outside our grasp.

Similar to what you described, we’ll find ourselves standing to the right on moving sidewalks and escalators, seeking out elevators for a single floor hop, and yes, begging for the ground floor hotel room. Airports are a nightmare; although, on a recent trip to London, when security’s computers were down at Heathrow and there was a three-hour wait to get through the lines, the folks at Virgin took pity, requisitioned a wheelchair, and hustled us to our terminal. We were deeply grateful.

During these ‘down’ times, it’s a real study in human nature to observe how people treat the disabled. Some good.. some bad.. some completely indifferent. This post really isn’t meant to paint all people with a common brush. That can’t be done. It’s merely written to acknowledge that of which you spoke. One thing that we’ve learned is that you really do need a sense of humor. You need to be able to step outside yourselves and chuckle at the situation(s) that you find yourselves in at times. People have a tendency to rant and rave at LIFE, to blame fate for their problems. You really can’t do that. Like I say to my wife, ‘It is what it is.’

You are wrong, at least it should have taught you the lesson everybody sooner or later learns:

No matter who, how, where, when, but life ALWAYS finds the way to fuck you.

And thanks for helping defeat that lame brain proposal to criminalize anonymous blogging in New Jersey!

While I don’t want to go thru what you went thru, I know the opportunity to walk in others shoes and return to our own can be a powerful one.

Sounds like you took the right lessons from it.

You probably know this by now, but afib can cause clots to form in your heart and, if you’re unlucky, to escape and cause a stroke. I know - my Dad suffered an afib related stroke. Please watch this and if it recurs, don’t wait a month to deal with it.

One thing I hope we all get out of this is that just because you can’t race around, doesn’t mean you are not valuable. When we see people on the right side of the escalator, we might remember that they could be there for many reasons.

This was my life up until the age of 38. I had a bout of severe afib that lasted for 3 days. Even I knew that this wasn’t just laziness. The ER doctor took one look at the EKG and I was in intensive care for 6 days.

Now I’m all fixed and cannot bring myself to step out of my old self. Strangely…NOW I’m more scared of my heart than I ever was back before the ablation.

You don’t seem to have this attitude at all - for you, it’s more a matter of being an inconvenience to others. To speed up is to get what you need done so others can have a chance, and for others to rush seems to show their politeness in a deep sense, too.

Hmm. I’ll have to think about this. Not many times that the motion of the world has been praised. Most times, people despise the busyness and lack of reflection both moving fast or moving at all imply. Usually I encounter works like Wordsworth’s Sonnet Upon Westminster Bridge, where only the city at rest is what allows the narrator to realize that it has a beauty as part of a greater, natural whole.

Then again, in that particular poem, the city being composed of things that can be still implies a praise of the motion, as if the stillness or slowness was indispensible to the movement of others (in the poem, note how we ascend from the city to the air to the stars and God in His Heaven, and how the city then is called a heart - it seems that what is divine stays still, so that the human can move, be free).

Oh well. You’ve got me thinking, and I thank you for that.