This post was sponsored by Walgreens Cystic Fibrosis Services as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central. I received compensation as a thank you for my post.
Finding out your child has a life-long disease isn’t an easy thing. There are so many emotions and feelings that a parent goes through, sadness, guilt, anger and finally acceptance and hope. Learning all you can about Cystic Fibrosis and how to make sure our child is taken care of in the best way possible was our number one priority when we found out our baby was diagnosed with CF. It was a tough pill to swallow hearing that Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a lifelong disorder that affects patients’ daily life, including everything from school to work and personal life. CF is a complex condition that affects the respiratory and digestive system in approximately 30,000 adults and children in the US at any given moment.
Each person lives with Cystic Fibrosis differently and severity of CF can vary widely. Because people with CF are at an increased risk of infection and cross-contamination, having a child with CF can make a parent and the child themselves feel isolated and sometimes depressed. It’s so important to create as normal a life as possible around your child or family member with CF. Administering medications, keeping them on the proper diet and doing at home therapy as much as possible to keep them healthy is such an essential part of their well-being as well as your own and it will certainly help to provide the best environment for your family as a whole.
Since creating a healthy environment for our child has always been our first priority, I’m happy to announce I will be working with Walgreen’s CF Champions “Navigating The Journey Together” program. The program aims to help those living with or caring for someone with CF to become educated about everything from the proper way to administer medications, to the right medications to use and how to live well with Cystic Fibrosis. Being a caregiver to a child with CF, we’ve learned many lessons over the years, most of all how important sticking to a medication regime can be for us and our child.
We’ve found that making medicine fun really helps as well as having a chart that helps us track when and how often we’ve done what medications. From performing lung therapy at home and turning it into a game to administering enzymes every time she eats by using her favorite foods and even pretending to be Star Wars characters while using a nebulizer throughout the day. We’ve learned how to cope and create an environment for our daughter that keeps her healthy and makes her still feel like a kid. As she’s grown older she’s come to realize and understand the importance of her medicine regime as well and now it’s just a matter of routine!
Cystic Fibrosis IS scary and it IS hard, but it’s ALSO controllable and Walgreen’s CF Champions “Navigating The Journey Together” program is here to help guide you along the way.
Laura Boyer says
You are so right that finding out your child has an incurable disease is so very hard. We are 7 months in to our CF journey and some days it all seems so very overwhelming and depressing. I love that you try to make the medicine “fun” and we try to do the same for our baby. Making CF less of a chore and more normal will definitely help as our children grow. Wishing you and your family all the best!