Anger: Tell Me How You Really Feel

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One of my first reader inquiries came from KR, who wrote, "Hey, CG, hope you'll say more about why you think you've been feeling angry of late, since I suspect the reasons will be complex and insightful. An impulse not to be angry--to do one's best to keep-it-positive--is admirable, but sometimes anger is the most honest and justified reaction to a situation. And it's often a productive one. To whit: maybe anger is one of the big reasons that you started this blog, and that's nothing to apologize for/feel bad about. Just sayin'."

I have been meaning to follow up on this comment for a while. I needed some time to think on it. This posting will be incomplete and I will have to follow up in later posts, because it is already very late and I am trying to keep myself to a post-by-midnight type of schedule.

So . . . I think that I have been increasingly angry over the last three years about having CF. I was so angry a few years ago that I was turning away, pretty dramatically, from the medical establishment altogether. I was meeting with doctors only to get prescriptions, and on a pretty hard-core self-management bend from about 2005-2008. Thankfully, during this time I suffered very few periods of illness, and no real exacerbation or crisis. Unfortunately, I also lost a lot of my lung capacity during this period, which must have slowly sort of eeked away from me while I harnessed my fear of doctors and drove the ship of my personal life and career.

Looking back, I am not sure that I would have done it any other way, or that staying tethered to the CF Clinic would have changed my health outcome. From 2005-2008 I led a very productive, very physically active life that has propelled me into the lifestyle that I have now. If I had followed the medical advice I was getting at that time, something in my spirit and in my logical mind tell me that I actually would have suffered a worse fate.

So, I became angrier and angrier at the medical community, at the entity of CF, and at people in my life who were asking me to make CF a greater focus. I had been lied to by the medical community. They told me that my life was ending, and they were wrong. My life is still going, years later. They told me that the things I enjoyed: teaching, rehearsing, socializing - were contributing to my poor health. I believe that these things actually are my strongest reasons to live.

I have much more to say on this topic, but I will leave it for another day, as it is time for sleep and past my "publish post" deadline!

But this is the point: I was angry, and am angry, because I am having trouble resting in the middle of my distrust with the medical community, and my need to be involved with them, my fear of doctors in general, and my security with my current medical staff. I am in a place that to me, at this point, seems innavigable. And I'm not used that. I'm a very directed, very forward-moving type of person. Being unable to drive my own ship, and being forced to have a partner who I will never really trust (the medical community) makes me so so so angry.

Goodnight,
CG

NOTE IN FOLLOW UP 7/3/09: I do currently trust my CF Clinic staff, I think, as much as I am capable of trusting medical professionals. I am not looking to change clinics right now. I think that would make my "issues" worse. But I welcome tons of suggestions, so keep 'em coming, people.