Cystic Fibrosis

This disease is close to my heart. It is one of the biggest reasons I became a respiratory therapist. Even though I don't do that area of work. When I became pregnant with Kade my doctor did a blood screan that basically looked at my DNA to see if I was pottentially passing on any genes that might effect my child. I was called a week after this test to be told that I carry the Cystic Fibrosis (CF) gene. They wanted Ryan to get tested to find out our chances (since both parents have to be a carrier in order for your child to have a chance of having CF). They also wanted to give us the chance to terminate the pregnancy if we had wanted to with that information. We knew that no matter what we would not be terminating the pregnancy and decided not to have Ryan get the test done, especially since we didn't have great insurance at the time.

Knowing that I carried the gene I researched the disease and that is when I decided I wanted to help those poor kids that had to deal with the disease.

When I became pregnant with Kooper I worried that he could possibly be born with CF and at the time we had GREAT insurance so I requested the doctor to order the test and thankfully Ryan tested negative for the gene so I didn't need to worry anymore.

During school I did a few research papers on CF because it was so interesting to me. I watched (and bawled my eyes out) many videos on Youtube of kids who were fighting for their life or who had lost their life to this disease. I hadn't thought alot about it lately until it was brought up on a blog I follow. Here is the video.