Statistics can be deceiving. It deceived my doctors for 16 years. Being of Indian origin with normal growth, I did not fit the common template of being a Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patient. But I am a CF patient and it took 16 years to diagnose and the timing of the diagnosis made sure that my academics got negatively impacted.
The symptoms were subtle at first. They started with an infrequent cough and sometimes a runny nose. During the start of the middle school, the symptoms progressed to coughing every night for a few minutes. Through out the middle school years, it progressed to several hours of night cough along with occasional cough during the day.
This started to affect my athletics since I had difficulty breathing every time I played. By this time, even playing in the yard seemed to appear daunting. My academics started to suffer as well. Going into high school, I started to cough every 10 seconds. As it
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However, due to the years of misdiagnosis my lungs condition warranted an immediate and strong treatment. I was hospitalized on Thanksgiving in 2013 for two weeks. No sooner than I was discharged that I was hospitalized again for two weeks because of pancreatitis, a complexity that comes along for some CF patients. By the time, I had learned the new lifestyle of daily therapies and the ways to deal with the unwanted side effects of the medicines, four months of the sophomore school year were missed. Along with CF & acute pancreatitis, I was also diagnosed with Allergic Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis (ABPA) and cold induced asthma. The latter would cause me to miss another four months of school during my junior year as well as act as the catalyst for us to finally move from Virginia to Florida before the start of my senior year. As it stands, I would now be restricted to colleges in warm