Hey there~ (this is really long but please at leats e-mail me to talk)my name is maddy and im a senior in highschool. I was diagnosed at 3 months old so i've lived with cf my whole life. Up until about 7th grade i seemed like a normal healthy kid with the occasional hospitalization once a year but otherwise i was great. I played soccer since i was 6 until i was about 13, which was a great passion of mine. When i was about 13-14 i began to get really sick and eventually was put on steroids- which turned my life in COMPLETE HELL! I never really knew the extent that my illness could go to before then, i thought the occasional sick times were as bad as it could get, WRONG!!! During my last 2 years of junior high i was pretty much homeschooled cause of the constantly going in the hospital and being sick. The steroids were the only thing keeping me half-way decent i guess u could say, but they were doing much more bad than good. I gained a lot of weight ( i weighed more than i do now), my face was blown up like a balloon and i wasnt the same girl that i used to see in the mirror. My friends and people would always ask what happen to ur face, and i would just tell them it was a reaction to one of my meds. The boys would make fun of me who used to be my friends and stuff. I remember this one saying "oh u ate too much turkey for thanksgiving didnt you!" and i was just totally horrified of what was happening to me. I had a few close friends but i still felt totally alienated from everything. I also got diabetes and kidney stones from the steroids wich resulted in a surgery to extract the stones from my uriter. I was finally taken off the steroids a couples months b4 8th grade graduation, so when i came back i looked pretty normal again. I realized how shallow people can be when i started recieving attention again from a bunch of guys and people were talking to me again. While i was happy i was also appauled that ppl can just be so inconsiderate of others and so self-involved. It was like if u look good then u will receive attention but if u look different u everyone stares. I hated it! Although, it was great to be back w/ all my friends and feel wanted and normal again. I also started going out with this guy like 2 days after graduation, hmmm i wonder why he never payed attention to me b4?!?!?! Anyway, i thought soccer would be an option again and started to try to practice slowly. As i found out it wasnt and i in the winter of freshmen year i got sick again. I started going full-time but then had to switch to half days and the rest was homeschooled. There were times when i was completely depressed in highschool, like how no one seemed to notice that i was sick or they acted like their life was so much worse. I was admmitted to a psychiatric hospital late freshmen year because i was cutting, i would refuse to go to school and threatened to kill myself. I would get so anxious about school and school work and that i wouldnt be able to finish it all and then i would think all my teachers thought i was just a slacker. See i always acheived high grades and my illness and the inadequateness of my guidance counselor was bringing my grades down to D's and C's and that really pissed me off. Because the school couldnt accompany my illness and problems, i had to suffer bad grades even F's. Well, sophmore year came and there were more hospitalizations, a sinus surgery and more home schooling. Junior i tried half days but it didnt work so i was homeschooled permanantly. The fact that i couldnt see my friends on a daily basis made me fall into a depression again and i would never wanna call them on the weekends, i thought why dont they ever call me?! What i learned was that they were scared that i would think they were rude if they all of a sudden just started calling up now. The one positive thing in my life was that i found a boyfriend, he is the first bf ive told about my cf because i feel so comfortable with him and we love each other so much. he has been by my side through sooo much and he knows everything about me, vice versa! He's a year older so hes in college now and im in my senior year. I really would like to talk to other teens about their senior year, cause im homeschooled again and its really hard for me to see my friends alot. i feel so out of the loop and this is supposed to be my damn senior year, the best school year of my life! But i have missed out on sooo much cuz of the cf and shit. I just would really love some one too talk about all the shit that goes on and how to cope with it and just to talk to another CF'er preferably in my posistion! i know my thing was really long but i just wanted u to know the basis of where im coming from. e-mail please at LiLmaDz6@msn.com i would really love to talk to anyone with cf! <img src="i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif" border="0">