Guy and Lisa have shared part of their story about how they manage to stay active and positive as they face the challenges of life with a child with CF.
What do you do to keep mentally healthy?
Take time out together as a couple whenever we can. Whether we go for a coffee or have a date night, we try and ensure we continue to communicate openly and regularly.
As a family, we stay active and positive and try to have lots of fun whenever we can. We encourage Taj and Ben to remain active and participate in varied sports and activities, for example, gymnastics, basketball, Auskick football, hip hop dancing and swimming.
What do you do to keep physically healthy?
Guy works in a physically demanding job which helps keep him fit. We have also set up a small home gym and we try to use as regularly as we can.
Lisa and the boys walk to school as often as possible. We also have a trampoline on which both boys enjoy endless hours of fun.
Again, we encourage the participation in a healthy balance of sports and activities.
How do you stay on track with managing treatments, appointments, work, family etc?
We work very hard to adhere to a strict regime which includes physio before and after school and a nightly nebuliser. Most medications are taken at the start of the day which makes it easier to remember.
Guy is self-employed which provides some flexibility in relation to attending appointments and achieving a healthy work/life/family balance.
We also rely heavily on support from Lisa’s Mum and Dad for 3 monthly clinic and annual bronchoscopy/review appointments.
We have found that it is absolutely critical to diarise every appointment and to remain organised.
How do you deal with unexpected challenges?
When challenges arise, we rely heavily on support from Grandma and Pop and again we find being organised in the beginning in varied aspects can give us a bit of a head start. It is important we remain in a position to react quickly if needed.
Tell us how you enjoy family time?
We try and make the most of the ‘good times’ as you never really know what’s around the corner. Therefore, when Taj is in a good place, we are out and about going to the park, catching up with family and friends, being active, playing football, going out for lunch.
Anything further you would wish to add?
We always work hard to remain positive and are forever hopeful that technology will provide significant improvements in the management of CF in the near future. Thus, providing a much better prognosis for Taj than if he were born when we were. The support we get from Princess Margaret Hospital and Cystic Fibrosis WA is amazing and makes a huge difference to us as parents for which obviously we are very grateful.
Article from RED Magazine, Edition 4, 2015.