Hi Piper - I definitely see where you are coming from now. I can only imagine that it would be seriously frustrating to deal with that "well if you just tried harder" attitude when you already are trying really hard. The difference with my husband is that he is not trying hard... he's pretty much non-compliant for any treatments, other than exercise. His attitude tends to be "well I'm just going to get sick in the end anyway, so what's the point in bothering with these therapies?" That type of pessimism drives me crazy! I have pretty much given up arguing with him about it, and I try to respect his feeling on CF, realizing that he's been dealing with this his whole life.
That said, I really would like to change his mind, and I've been trying to think of ways to do this without just annoying him. I actually started putting together a website with information on all the newest therapies.. supposed to be a "scientific" way of looking at things with an optimistic perspective, since he also is an engineer who likes to look at numbers and facts. After reading your post and the responses to it that optimism can be really frustrating to CFers, I sorta freaked out that maybe the website is a bad idea and will just annoy people instead of helping. I hope not.
Anyway sorry to get off topic - in regards to your initial post, I also noticed that the 'optimist' was answering in response to someone being surprised at your age. I've had similar experiences - recently after doing a CFF fundraiser, we mentioned to someone we'd just met that that's where we'd been - this person started going on about how CF is such a horrible disease and it's so sad etc etc etc. We both kept quiet but in my head I got angry and wanted to tell her that there's been so much progress she doesn't know about. Same thing happened in my physiology class when the professor was talking about CF as a childhood disease and that people don't live into their teens... again I got mad and wanted to tell him he didn't know what he was talking about. (I didn't say anything.) I think this reaction is because these people who don't necessarily know anything about CF other than it being a fatal disease often express their thoughts in a way that it strikes a chord with all the fears that I try to surpress. "What do you mean it's a horrible disease?? My husband isn't going to die any time soon, so whatever!!!" Ha. It's just a defensive response. So, maybe your friend felt something similar, and her defensive reaction was to shoot back that people with CF can live just fine if they do these new treatments. I don't know. Just my perspective, again - sorry for being so long winded!