There are a lot of people who are seriously impacted by cystic fibrosis—especially kids. I was relatively lucky that it didn’t affect me too much as a child, but it breaks my heart that people are given a diagnosis at zero, and forced to fight every day after. My biggest advice to other people with CF is that they shouldn’t feel the need to be strong every minute of every hour of every day.
That being said, your mindset is everything. My mum never wanted me to know about the condition—she thought if I did, I would start researching it, seeing what my life expectancy was, and that I might play into that. If your mindset isn’t supportive of health, that’s just an extra thing you have to persevere through.
At the end of the day, every day is an opportunity to take whatever cards we’ve been dealt and turn them into a winning hand. If you’re given bad luck, then it’s incredibly easy to play the victim, but it’s not helpful to do that—your attention is better spent elsewhere. Part of the fight is realizing that you have a choice in how you react to challenges, and then choosing to reach in the most positive way possible.
In a weird way, that means that your chances of survival are so much higher. You’ve turned a bad hand into a good one.
