My Story

On March 13th 1994, I was born 2 months premature. My mother had gone into premature labor at about 20 weeks of pregnancy and had been on bed rest. Not able to stop the contractions, the doctors had no choice but to deliver me. I was born very small and not breathing. And something else was very wrong, my stomach was black and blue and so swollen that it looked like it was about to rupture. I had a meconium ileus, where your intestines rupture because the meconium is so thick it can not pass through the intestines, which is a sign of Cystic Fibrosis. At only 3 pounds 15 ounces, I was quite tiny. The doctors rushed me out of the delivery room to get me breathing and for emergency surgery. At first, they did not know what was wrong with me. They could see a large mass on the ultrasound and could only see one kidney. They told my parents that they would need to do exploratory surgery. My parents held my tiny hand and named me Faith before the doctors took me back for the "unknown" surgery. That is when they discovered the ruptured bowel. It was so gangrene, that they had to remove 75% of my small intestines. Although the doctors immediately suspected Cystic Fibrosis, it was four long and agonizing weeks before my parents were told that the tests had come back positive. The doctors told my parents I would not survive the first night, then they said I would never be able to sustain life because of my short bowel. Despite all the negative things that the doctors told my parents, my parents were determined that I was going to live and just kept turning to the Lord for healing and strength. I was in and out of the hospital a lot during the first few years of life. The first few years included TPN, which is nutrition through an iv because I couldn’t eat enough and didn’t absorb anything. It also included oxygen, medications, breathing treatments, and i.v. medications, and then a feeding tube was placed in my stomach to help me gain weight. I still have my feeding tube which I use for my nightly drip feedings. This is a routine thing in my life: treatments, drip feedings, medications, and hospitals. As a child, after being on TPN, it caused me to go into liver failure and need a transplant. I was going to be put on the transplant list and once again my parents were told I was too weak to live while waiting for one… but once again God answered my parent's prayers and my liver started working. I have not needed a liver to this day. The main thing as you might know with C.F. is that the lungs get full of thick mucus and it makes them susceptible to infections. I have had lots of infections and that’s mostly the reason for my hospital stays. I have a portacatheder, so I can get my I.V. antibiotics to help fight the infections. My main enemy ...pseudomonas aeruginosa which is a bacteria that I have fought my whole life. One time I had a micro bacterium that made me really sick! I never want to get that again. So, 16 years of fighting my pseudomonas has made my lungs weak and hard to breath. Sometime soon, I might be going through what a lot of C.F. patients do, a double lung transplant. It is not an easy decision or an easy procedure. Every day, I have numerous breathing treatments, a drip feeding of formula at night so that I can sustain my weight and tons of medications every day and night. There is always something there to remind me of my C.F. But besides all of that, one thing that I think makes me special is my scars. No, they are not pretty, but they remind me every day that I am strong. I have numerous scars from catheders and liver biopsies and surgeries. My main scar is on my stomach from the bowel resection at birth. It runs all the way across my stomach from left to right and then I have another scar that runs through that up and down from my tube placement. So it makes a cross on my tummy. That reminds me that I am still here because of Jesus. I know that for sure! Every breath for me is a miracle and my family and I pray that my lungs stay strong and I can stay healthy! And this is my C.F. story...