CFStrong: Inform. Educate. Empower.

CFStrong: Inform. Educate. Empower.


Podcast: Bryce on work, family and CF

August 15, 2022

Bryce on work, family and CF
In this episode of the CFStrong podcast, we speak with Bryce, a teacher from NSW, about work and family and how he manages both while also taking care of his health.



























”A lot of people who are coming in to having a family think that they need to be on top of it all the time, you just, you can't be and it's hard. And it's tough. And it's not going to be easy all the time. There's certain things you can do to make it easier. But sometimes I'm just not and it's, something's got to give. And you've got to make the decisions and concessions as to what's going to give. But always trying to make sure that health kinda comes first.











Transcript
Voiceover: Welcome to the CFStrong podcast. CFStrong covers the successes and challenges faced by those living with cystic fibrosis. You'll hear first person stories, conversations with health professionals, friends and partners. Just a heads up, guests may share their personal views about treatments and health management. But please remember, this is not medical advice and you should always follow the advice of your clinic team regarding your health.
Sam: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the CFStrong podcast. My name is Sam and today we have Bryce, Bryce would you like to introduce yourself.
Bryce: Yeah, absolutely. I'm on the man. I go by he/him. I am 33. I'm a secondary science teacher, I teach chemistry as kind of my major area. And I have cystic fibrosis.
Sam: Lovely to have you on the show. Can you just start by kind of talking to us about your job and how did you kind of figure out that teaching was what you wanted to do with yourself.
Bryce: Um, I've always kind of known that I wanted to help people, I didn't really know what that really looked like. I spent a lot of time just thinking about how I could go about helping people. And that kind of changed over time. As I kind of went through high school, I kind of thought about all the different options. And I thought that maybe nursing or being in the police force or something, is something I could do. But with my condition, I didn't think either of those two kinds of things were kind of best suited to the work that I would end up doing. So I ended up switching to-- I really enjoyed science was the main big thing. I really, really enjoyed science had some great teachers, and it's just kind of how my brain works. Not very good at English, any of those kind of written works. And so I kind of moved towards that way. And I just said, how could I help people and I think teaching people, I think I had something to give, and something to offer to others. So that's how it all started.
Sam: Excellent. So just going back to what you were saying, do you think that obviously having cystic fibrosis is a quite a big thing to consider when you're looking at their career path, do you believe that really affected how you went about, say, looking for a career?
Bryce: This is an interesting thing, I think I was quite privileged to have a really, really supportive household as I grew up, and not to say that other people don't, I just think I'm very lucky. I was kind of brought up with the mentality that regardless of my condition, I'm going to be here forever, like a normal person, and I was treated accordingly. And the expectations were that regardless of my condition, I'll need to be exercising regularly, I'll need to be, you know, doing all the things that everybody else was doing. And that included work. The main consideration was more about what germs could I pick up. And so something like nursing, which I was really interested in having a bit of a background in science just wasn't going to work just because of the exposure at the time. And it just didn't seem like the right thing for me. It could have been, maybe, but it just wasn't going to work.