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"Consider the positive influence you aspire to have as someone living with cystic fibrosis. How do you hope to inspire and empower future generations of young adults with chronic illnesses?"

Cystic fibrosis is a methodical killer, made all the more insidious from the fact that it strikes from within. Your body cannot regulate the mucus it creates—and so it sloughs, seeps, spreads, like a fungus, into every organ, every passageway, every little crevice. It builds and builds, becoming a breeding ground for pathogens which will overpower you—unless you drown in the quagmire of your own lungs first. You try to hold it off with lung clearance therapy and medicines, but despite your best efforts, you can always feel its slimy residue clinging to the back of your throat: an omen. One would think, then, that cystic fibrosis would go down in infamy, as any villain so cunningly sadistic should—but almost no-one has heard of the condition. It is very rare; only about 100,000 people suffer from it worldwide. You don't hear about it on the news. You don't read about it in books. You don't see people bring it up in casual conversation. It may as well not exist, for all the acknowledgement it gets outside of CF spaces. But even within those spaces, such as at the annual CF walks, we must keep our distance, out of a risk of spreading diseases to each other. We are like the stars: seemingly close, yet in reality, unfathomably far apart. There are so many things I've felt and experiences I've had that only another person with my condition could relate to, and I can feel the writhing of those memories, begging to be released, seeking the kinship that they may never find. The solace of shared hardship is difficult to come by for CFers. We are detached from society and from each other, and so we struggle on alone. Out of cystic fibrosis's many attacks on the livelihoods of its victims, this is, perhaps, the most malicious. It is also the easiest one to combat—and that is what I plan to do. I have dreamed of becoming an author, and I have many story ideas running rampant in my mind. I want to include characters with cystic fibrosis in my books, so that people like me can feel that someone understands them. I want to strip CF of some of its power by letting its victims know that they are seen and heard, know that they are not fighting alone. More importantly, writing about cystic fibrosis can spread awareness so that more people are aware of the cruel killer they have been ignorant of for so long. With luck, they will want to help fight for a cure, and the villain plaguing 100,000 people's lives can at last be put to rest.