Diana - You put it so well when you write about liviing with fear. The fear, I think, can be more insidious than the disease. Although my story is different, notice this common thread to yours: I am 39 and until about 10 years ago I had ABSOLUTELY no problems with CF. It was as if I didn't even have it. Then I got my first bout of hemoptysis, a very bad one, and it scared the LIFE out of me and I was sure I was going to die. Since then, although my health has been fair (though never as good as before), I live in absolute fear of it happening again (which it has every year or so). The fear led to panic attacks, anxiety, and then later depression. I started seeing a therapist who specializes in dealing with chronic illnesses, I found it very helpful to get at the underlying fear beneath my thinking. It has taken me a long time to come to a sense of reality about my CF, and of course I have confident phases and full freak-out phases! I think it is essential that you examine (through therapy, journalling, talking to friends, whatever) your fears that underlie the idea of getting an IV. That was a traumatic experience for you, and until you have emotionally worked through that experience, it will still haunt and control you. There is something called hyper-vigilance, which is a habit of anxiety in which one pays minute attention to every sensation of the body, thinking, "Is this a problem? is that a problem? am I getting sick now" etc. I was hyper-vigilant for years after my hemoptysis, and at every cough I would spit into the sink thinking "Am I bleeding now? How about now? How about now?" (kind of like the Verizon commercial!!). With therapy my hyper-vigilance has subsided, and I have been trying to understand what my own traumatic experience represents for me: fear of death, fear of decline, fear of worsening CF, fear of being out of control, fear of being embarrassed in public, and so on. I am definitely doing better with these issues and you will be able to get to that place too, though I know it seems far away now when one is so gripped by panic and fright. Those can be crippling emotions, preventing you from feeling your real feelings about yourself and your actual CF condition, whatever it is.Feel free to write me whenever. Let me know if you decided to do some therapy or write or talk or whatever to try to work through some of the issues.Laura, California