After that came little round tablets, each enzyme came in a foil-wrapped packaging. It took longer to open them than it did to swallow them.
​As a teenager, I used Cotazyme, which was in a capsule form and contains hundreds of beads, like Creon is today. I took 20 with a standard meal and 25 if I was eating fast food.

With the advancements in medical technology, the enzymes do their ‘thing’ better. Currently, I only need 10 Creon for each meal. If you’re a math-based person, you’ll realize that taking 10 Creon with three meals a day for seven days is not 238. I also take Creon with my immunosuppressant medications to aid their absorption.

Why people with CF need enzymes
For some people with CF, their pancreas has scarring. My pancreas tends to get blocked and unblocked regularly. Thick sticky mucous causes the blockages. In fact, thick sticky mucous is the cause of all the problems created by Cystic Fibrosis.
My on-again-off-again blockages mean that at the drop of a hat, my enzyme needs change. Which doesn’t bother me — I’m used to taking handfuls of tablets.
The transition period, however, can be an absolute bitch. I call it the Game of Creons. It even comes with its own throne. One minute you’re constipated, then the next, you have an exploding bottom.
Right now, I am totally dependant on enzymes. In comparison, eighteen months ago, I was mostly pancreatic sufficient. Back then, I took a measly two Creon with meals and nothing with snacks.

Finally a diagnosis
I can’t recall the day or the month when the doctor finally gave a diagnosis, “Your daughter has Cystic Fibrosis.”
Relief flooded over me. We had a diagnosis—an explanation for the malady of symptoms that had plagued my child since she’d been born. Surely now, things would start to get better.
With a treatment schedule plan and an appointment to learn physio, I hurried to the pharmacy to fill my scripts.
After spending a three-hour wait to see the consultant, the appointment itself was very brief. Although the doctor told me my daughter would not have a normal life expectancy, I did not digest the ramifications of this at the time.
I was a new mum, dealing with a seriously ill child, and my first pressing thought was of the need to get to the pharmacy to fill these scripts before commuting home in the peak hour traffic.

What did this diagnosis mean?
Information about Cystic Fibrosis was scarcer than hen’s teeth in the early seventies. No one we knew had ever heard of this illness that I struggled to pronounce. My sister and I scoured libraries for articles and the little information we gleaned usually consisted of only a few paragraphs. The main gist of these articles was that it was a childhood illness.
At each clinic visit, I tried to glean a little more information, and as three months would pass between visits, I had plenty of time to frame questions. What was lacking was an open doctor. Even after several visits, she either lacked the courage or could not be bothered to take the time to explain to me that Cystic Fibrosis is a progressive illness. I still assumed or had the perception that because this treatment regime my daughter was on seemed to be working, it meant we could manage Sandi’s Cystic Fibrosis.
On one visit, I was at the door about to leave when I asked, “If Sandi has children, will they have Cystic Fibrosis too?”
I can’t recall her exact answer, but the dispirited look in her eyes awoke a need in me to have the full picture. So after waiting three months for my next appointment, I asked outright what the prognosis was, and this time she finally answered.
But it wasn’t the answer I wanted. At best, if we followed the treatment regime religiously, my daughter had a 50% chance of living to thirteen.

Making a longed-for connection
Just after that, I had an extraordinary moment. I picked up the Daily Newspaper and read an article about a girl in Western Australia who suffered from Cystic Fibrosis. To see and read of another child with this same unpronounceable condition was mind-boggling. At that time, we didn’t have a phone, so I drove to the Post Office to use the public phone and contacted the people from the news article.
That phone call led me to a group of parents with children who suffered from Cystic Fibrosis. I learned more from them than I had from the doctor.
​
Finally, I was not alone.