"Perspective" by Angeline Chase
Cystic Fibrosis, New Year, New Perspective?
As the clock struck midnight on the new year my 10 year old said “guess what?” “What?” I said.
“I haven’t showered all year!” And then the giggles erupt.
Thinking it would be funny to join him in his games I followed his statement with “oh, yeah? Well I haven’t been hospitalized all year either!”
I had gotten out of the hospital just a week before Christmas and I had 6 hospitalizations in the last 18 months, so it seemed worthy of a mention. He joined in the laughter with me and for the rest of the New Year Celebrations my sounding cry was “No hospitalizations this whole year!!!”
The funny thing is that saying it actually made me feel great. It felt like it was really true. Like I didn’t have any hospitalizations for a whole year. Like this next year was going to go great. Did the clock going past midnight change me INTO Cinderella instead of out of Cinderella? Maybe.
Maybe the new year had brought me a chance for a new look at things. My mood became brighter and happier. I was able to lay to rest the troubles of the last year.
Enjoying the New Year has not always been something I do. For many years I have barely acknowledged the New Year and thought how silly it was to spend any time making new goals or thinking about the old year because life continued on the same as always. However, as I have grown older I have learned something that changed the way I view things.
For the first 30 years of my life I didn’t know that I had Cystic Fibrosis. Then one day, when I had my life established and thought I knew how things would play out, that’s when I found out that I had cystic fibrosis. I would need to figure out how to deal with that… but I really had no idea what it meant. I think that not knowing made it scarier. Different perspectives came into play and I began to play out all the scariest scenarios that I could think of, including what the impact would be on my loved ones. This led me to experience depression and anxiety. My disease worsened and many new years passed with no new perspectives. My life seemed hopeless to me. I felt truly bereft. I was overwhelmed with the information in front of me and with all the possible futures.
Then one day I found out about a program where you learned how to sing. This was something that was actually fun AND helped my cystic fibrosis. Hallelujah! I signed up and was fortunate enough to be paired with Ashley Ballou-Bonnema. We clicked immediately. Ashley was so happy and positive about everything. I had so many questions for her about dealing with cystic fibrosis and she was willing to indulge my questions in addition to the singing lessons. Ashley had dealt with having cystic fibrosis all of her life. She spoke about so many of the struggles that I deal with too. She was so positive and she would always tell me that I was doing such a good job at handling my life and my disease. Finally someone who looked at the world as a good place despite the many struggles she had. Soon her perspective began to become my perspective. I started to see myself through Ashley’s eyes. She became someone I trusted. If she said I was doing good, I must be doing good… right?
Once I was able to change my perspective long enough to see that the world was still there, I continued to find different things that helped me to continue to improve my outlook on life. It turns out that midnight doesn’t change your perspective. However, if you keep working on trying to change your perspective many midnights will slowly help to shift your mindset. I think there are things worth focusing on in our lives and things not worth focusing on. I live in Utah and I love going to see our beautiful national parks. It is so amazing to look at. But if you just look down you will see all the turds that animals have left on the trails, all the weeds down there, and the scary rocks. We may need to glance down there every so often to try and avoid stepping on crap and the rocks, but for the most part we shouldn’t waste our time looking at weeds and turds. We should look at the beautiful vista and try to enjoy the beautiful moments that we do have.
