Heya,

So as you can see from the title I’m not going to be doing a day in the life of my annual review as I had suggested last post. This is purely because I was too unwell to fully complete my annual review so I didn’t have all the tests, and for the tests I did have I will not receive the results until January so I may do a post then.

Instead I am going to focus on dealing with an admission while at uni.
A typical admission for someone with CF involves a 2 week course of intravenous antibiotics to help fight off a lung infection and gain more strength, they are also done to boost health and improve lung function. 

This is something I have only had to go through twice (two weeks each time) since being at uni but nevertheless I have a lot of experience with admissions throughout my life so I can give advice on managing in regards to school aswell.

Obviously the first main difference with an admission at uni is that you most likely won’t be near your family. This means getting to hospital with all your stuff for two weeks and supporting yourself.

While at home visits from family will occur regularly, at uni it is unlikely family can come visit each day. This can make being in hospital emotionally very hard and unsettling. Also people with CF have to be kept in isolation so there is also no patient interactions allowed.

I am very lucky and had lots of my uni friends and my boyfriend come visit me whilst I have been in hospital at uni. I also had friends from home come and visit which is so nice. 

In my first year visits were less from friends as we were all new, this meant my family made extra effort to come and see me as I felt lonely.

While in my admission in second year I had my uni family come and see me every single day so this took the pressure of family visits.  This really helped me get through the admissions and I felt so supported and happy.

This however may not be the case for everyone and if you don’t have a group of friends at uni that would come visit you, I would recommend going back home to have an admission as this means family will be near.

In terms of uni itself, it is so important to let tutors and lecturers know of admissions, this means they can get work sent to you and change deadlines to work around you. It is very unlikely that work will be done while in hospital, as days can be very tiring, with early mornings and late nights from the IV’s and constantly having doctors, nurses and physios in your room doing tests and asking questions. Don’t worry about missing work and falling behind, uni will help you work it out. In my opinion its best to take the two weeks off and focus completey on your health and resting when possible.
Work should always come second to health and its better to do it when your feeling better anyway.

I always like to take as much as I can into hospital in terms of home comforts, I bring a laptop so I can watch netflix, food so that I don’t need to eat gross hospital food and hair straighteners so I can feel more human (I hate my natural hair). This is so important for mental health as spending two weeks trapped in one room for the majority of time can be so draining.

I’m sure this won’t be new advice for anyone with CF, but just incase, make sure to pre discuss with the doctors and ward staff that you can have weekend leave, this means you can go home and escape hospital for a few hours.
If there is no one to pick you up while at uni, ask for your leave to be while someone is with you, even if it happens to be during the week. This is probably the most important thing to do as spending two weeks in one room isn’t pleasant and a change of scene will make you feel way better. If there is no one at all able to take you out then just ask to walk round the hospital and go to a cafe on site, its better than nothing.

Also make friends with the nurses, this is just general advice to anyone in hospital, but all the staff are generally so nice and friendly and it makes time go by a lot faster if you can gossip and joke around with them all. It can also make you feel less lonely.

In terms of advice, this is all I have for now, if I think of anymore I will be sure to address it another time.

I’m also hoping to also write some posts unrelated to CF to give more variety to my blog so watch out for that.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Isabelle x