When an 8-Year-Old at the Hospital Reminded Me I'm Not Alone

I was hospitalized not that long ago for another one of my famous chest infections. I was super down about everything because this was right before my final exams, and I had papers up to my eyes.

One day I took a walk around the hospital. I thought nothing too interesting was going to happen. But then, a little boy in cafeteria asked what the thing in my neck was. (I don’t breath in my sleep, so I have a tracheostomy to assist with that issue.) I heard this and went over and asked him if he wanted to know, and he said yes. I gave him the quick and easy version of what’s wrong with me.

At first glance I thought he had cancer. But he had cystic fibrosis. He was only 8 years old and had a chest infection hitting him as hard as mine was hitting me. We hit it off immediately. I still firmly believe he was just impressed that he met someone else whose lungs were not behaving properly. We talked a lot about things that only people who have been sick their whole lives would understand. Hospitals, IV lines, doctors and the Children’s Wish Foundation.

Our attempts at being normal were obvious. I’m a second-year university student who’s unable to move out of her parents’ house. I have more medical equipment than clothing. He’s only 8, so there’s a good chance that he doesn’t even know his life isn’t normal.

At one point he asked me if I was on pediatric floor like he was, and I told him no. When I told him I was on the sixth floor, his eyes got ridiculously large. He said, in all seriousness, “Is it scary up there?” I was laughing so hard. I had to pull myself together and say, “No, it’s just grandpas up there.”

Sometimes being lifted up comes in the strangest forms and in the most unlikely places. To someone who is different, being reminded they’re aren’t alone is everything. That one similarity, that one thing the two of you have experienced that no one else has, can bring you closer then you ever thought possible. That was the case, at least, for a 20 year old with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS) and an 8-year-old with cystic fibrosis.

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