Lucy Gostwick

I stumbled into my third year as an undergraduate at Oxford University in 2001. As an English and German literature student, I was required to spend 9 months of the year in a German speaking country to absorb German culture and gain greater fluency in the language - an ordeal which I was looking forward to with some trepidation! I had never lived abroad for more than a month before, and frankly the whole idea scared me to bits.

I am very blessed to suffer from CF very mildly, and have not required IVs or regular inpatient admissions to date. I try to do physiotherapy twice a day, and when I went to Germany I was inhaling Colomycin through a Pari Boy Nebuliser. I also take Creon with food, about 6 pills with a meal, and an assortment of vitamins, other antibiotics and antidepressants.

A large concern for me before I went was how to get hold of these drugs while abroad. In the UK, PWCF can pay for their prescriptions in advance for the year and save money. Rather than spend large sums of money buying them in Germany, I opted to take all of them with me from the UK in a small suitcase (!) and replenish them every couple of months when I went home.

I had applied to the British Council to be a classroom assistant in Germany, and was duly posted to a Gymnasium in Stuttgart. For those unacquainted with the German school system, a Gymnasium is a Secondary School (not a gym!!) where purely academic subjects are taught, rather than vocational ones.

So in the autumn of 2001, my parents and I bundled my belongings into the car and drove across from the UK to Germany in the pouring rain to the little flat which was to be my home for the next 9 months. I grew very fond of this flat: a newly-built two bedroom apartment, a small kitchen, and a bathroom. From the point of view of my CF it was perfect: it was absurdly clean, and the bedrooms had carpets which were new, thin and easy to vacuum.

The flat was in a suburb of Stuttgart near the airport and also very close to a large expanse of land where people were growing every vegetable known to man: pumpkins, maize, cabbages. You name it, they had it! This was a real source of pleasure for me, as I am very fond of the countryside. I am extremely fortunate to have an enormous appetite for food and a genuine interest in it, so to watch it growing around the corner from my house was terribly exciting.

In the main street of Plieningen was a small supermarket where the locals would go to do their weekly shop armed with wicker baskets. I duly adopted the wicker basket stance (despite being about 30 years too young). Germany was preparing for the introduction of the Euro in 2001, but until then I had to grapple with converting from Sterling to Deutschmarks for every item I purchased. Math was never my forte!

With CF I have always been careful to eat a balanced and healthy diet with lots of fruit and vegetables. But on my year abroad I was also keen to adopt German cuisine and was soon buying all sorts of Wurst (sausage) and Schnitzels. There was also a very exciting choice of biscuits and chocolates, such as Lebkuchen, and I was particularly fond of Stollen, a marzipan fruit cake which is eaten at Christmas-time in particular. I really loved the Kaffee and Kuchen culture and remember going to a Konditorei when my mother came to visit, for just that: coffee and cake. The German diet really agreed with me but then I’m lucky in that I’ve never had a problem with maintaining my weight.

Teaching at the Gymnasium was great fun, especially the 11 year olds. I organised an English Club at lunchtime, where we would play word games and chop up magazines to make pictures of words. The older kids persuaded me to bring over the recently produced South Park video in English to watch after class! There was never an issue of having to tell them about my CF. The teacher in charge of me was aware of my condition, and was sadly rather unsympathetic when I called in sick a few times, but on the whole the CF did not interfere with my teaching.

I made friends with some other British students living in Stuttgart and would often go out with them to bars in the centre of town in the evening. Unfortunately the one thing that has never agreed with me (in any country) is beer, and this was a distinct disadvantage in Germany!! When we visited the Stuttgart Beerfest, it was sold in enormous 2 litre jugs per person! I tried my best, but with the amount of drugs I take, it really didn’t go down well. The Beerfest was nevertheless quite an experience with surly brass bands playing drinking songs and girls wearing rabbit ears dancing on tables!!!

As far as exercise was concerned, I tried to go jogging round the cabbage patches now and again, but jogging doesn’t really do it for me. I prefer walking, so I walked to and from the school every day. I think the most intense exercise I did during my stay was circuit training at Stuttgart University with a friend. Once was enough!

I managed to fit in my physio and nebuliser twice a day as usual, without disturbing my flatmate. I took 3 months’ worth of medicine out with me and replenished this on my visits back to the UK. A big concern for me was whether I would have problems at the airport with my nebuliser: at that time I had a large and cumbersome device which I was concerned that the airport luggage handlers wouldn’t allow me to take. But in fact I encountered no difficulties at all.

Although my consultant in the UK said I could come back to her for my 3 monthly checkups, I wanted to be linked with a hospital in Stuttgart just in case. So I went for a check up in Stuttgart as soon as I arrived. This was rather unnecessary and the doctor prescribed me a lot of drugs which I was shocked to discover I would have to pay for. I think the cost of medical treatment is the real problem with living with CF outside the UK. We are accustomed and really take for granted the way we are cared for at such a minimal cost.

I think the worst event of my stay CF-wise was when I experienced hemoptysis (when bronchial blood vessels which lie underneath the bronchial mucosa, start to bleed, often unexpectedly). I felt very alone and with no one to turn to. When I rang a friend and told her, she suggested I phone the Red Cross, which was slightly unhelpful!

All in all, living in Stuttgart was a really valuable experience for me and one that I am keen to repeat. I became fluent in German, and really enjoyed immersing myself in the culture, as well as teaching English classes at the school. I am fortunate in that CF really took a back seat and did not affect me whilst I was there. I am very keen to hear from people with CF who have had the opportunity to live abroad for a few months.