Cystic Fibrosis is a relentless disease. Every day with Cystic Fibrosis is a fight. Every day you enter the ring with your opponent, it’s the exact same opponent that knocked you out the day before. You know your opponent very well, you’ve been facing each other for years. You go toe to toe, sometimes for several rounds. Once in a while you think you may have the upper hand but your opponent is sneaky and tends to get you out of nowhere. You start to slip up, the punches are coming at all angles, blow after blow. You know you’re in trouble. You go down. The whistle blows.

My transition to adult care was a rocky experience that only the time spent with my pediatric team could prepare me for. I spent 10 years with my pediatric team and at nearly 22 years old, my pulmonologist was nudging me to move onto adult care. Begrudgingly, I accepted the reality that I couldn’t live my years out within pediatric care, and with a broken heart I began seeing the adult clinic in my city.

April is Donate Life month. Raising awareness for organ donation has become one of my new life goals. Before this year, it was just another month to me. Yes, I knew about donate life. No, it didn’t affect me personally.

Shortly after my fiancée, Ashley, told me about her cystic fibrosis, we were engaged. Months later, she passed away, leaving me to figure out what I could have done differently and how to cope.