Andrew W.'s Essay

Living with CF has taught me not to delay. Just as it is easy to procrastinate on a major assignment or report, so many of us procrastinate all the things that we really want to do in life. Having grown up in the rural South, I dreamed big as a child. I was given a picture atlas as a gift, and it would be my constant companion. I never left the confines of the South until I was 19 and traveled to Spain. It turns out that asking for a nebulizer in a Spanish pharmacy wasn’t difficult; I realized then that my disease wouldn’t and shouldn’t hold me back from anything. Before this I had been living with a disease, but now I knew I needed to live in spite of a disease. I proceeded to Africa a few months later and would live there for over a year. Despite the enjoyable times I had there, I vividly recall seeing the devastating effects of disease and realizing just how utterly blessed that I was. Getting TOBI across borders and worrying about nebulizer voltage is a challenge, but it is a challenge that can make my life more enjoyable and help me to achieve the only goal I have in life: to leave this world and those lives in it in better shape than when I arrived. Without CF, I feel that I would have delayed my goals and dreams until the unforeseeable future when they likely may not have been realized.