Cheriz: My life with Cystic Fibrosis

I have been blogging at www.cheriz.org since 2012. So an amazing 5 years! I found my forever career, my husband, my first & forever home! I said good-bye to my Stomach Tube & had some mjor medical transitions!  However, CF affects a lot more than myself now. It affects Andrew, soon we will have kids in the house. To call my blog Cheriz- just doesn't make sense anymore. Coming up with a new name was super hard! However, my new blog is More Than DNA! ( MoreThanDNA.org ) Why did I name it that? Because I am MORE than my CF (or mutated DNA that makes up my CF). My family also will not have shared DNA. Any kids in our house (whether we adopt or foster children or not) will be considered our family & we don't think it matters that they won't have shared DNA. DNA does not define our family or us as an individual. We are more than our DNA! I have posted my first blog post at the new site! But I'm working on moving a lot my archives from this blog over. So it...

I will be posting about the CF Walk, once we have all the photos, etc! I promise it will be soon. However, I would like to talk to you about our job/insurance situation I will be calling my health insurance tomorrow to go over all of the issues, so I don't write this for sympathy or advice. I just feel I need to share exactly what Andrew & I have to consider on a daily basis and how much CF affects every aspect of our life. You all know (I'm sure) that my husband is at a new job now. It has been bit of a crazy life for the last 2 years. He worked at Culvers in the past & had moved up to the position of General Manager (2 years ago) when we lived near Chicago. He LOVED that job and would of been happy there forever, but since each Culvers are individual franchises, the owners don't have to provide benefits. Andrew's employer didn't offer benefits to spouses. That obviously would not work for us, since (we knew sometime in the near-ish future we would be...

It is June already.... Wow, has time been flying by! May was Cystic Fibrosis Month and I spent a lot of the month preparing for the Princeton Cystic Fibrosis Walk (June 10th). If you want to join us or donate, just click here !  I also attended the Bloomington Great Strides Walk in May! Andrew (my husband) was the guest speaker  (watch video at link ) at the walk. I'm so proud of him, he has really stepped up in the last year and has been getting a lot more involved with the CF Foundation! In the last month I have gotten even more involved as well. I decided to join the CF Foundation Champions committee. We discuss ways to improve daily care and improvements that will help the CF population today. I was also invited to apply for a position on the 2017-2019 (2 year term)  CF Foundation's National CF Adult Advisory Council . The council is made up of 12 individuals that are selected across the United States that are leaders in the CF community. The AAC is responsi...