Out of Her Mind -- Musings on Education and Life

Some time in June.... Nadia graduated yesterday, and I cried--not because of the significance of the moment (it's only pre-school, and I'm not that sappy!), but because I wondered if I would see another graduation for her--if, in 13 years, she'd be alive and part of the graduating class of 2023! [Okay, that year was weird to write.]  Something was way wrong with me yesterday.  I mean, who loses it at a routine visit to the gyno?  Of course, most people don't go to those visits planning to learn that their daughter will never have children, either.  I suppose I should have known that, logically.  I knew that boys with cf are sterile.  By the time a person with cystic fibrosis is of realistic (out of their teens!) child-bearing age, her health is likely to have deteroriated to the point that pregnancy is out of the question--a danger to the mother, if she is physically able to get pregnant at this point (low weight causes a host of reproductive issues)....

Nadia before and after diagnosis: always smiling and STILL GROWING! I am not trying to write a sob story. My goal is to NEVER have to do that. My goal is to rewrite my daughter's story, to give her more time for her exposition, time for the rising action that will allow her to learn more about life and herself in the process, time for experiencing life's conflicts (commonly referred to as milestones and experiences). I want the resolution to be a long time coming; I am not interested in penning her epilogue. My dream is that she'll be around to pen mine. I can not change the fact that my daughter was born with cystic fibrosis. Nor would I have chosen not to have her here living her life, as I could have done had I known after conception that she was sick. In many ways, I am SO thankful that her disease was such a shock to me. Had I known prior to her conception that her father and I were both carriers of the cf gene, I would have felt it unethical to have a ...