Today’s guest post is brought to us by Bo Butler. His Ashley had her double-lung transplant in 2007. They go to Pittsburgh for her care and she is doing great! I trust that you’ll find this as thought-provoking as I did.

There’s something I haven’t talked much about on my blog, so I’m grateful to Fatboy for the chance to guest-post-it-up. It’s something very important to both myself and to Ashley. Something, in a larger way, becoming increasingly important to a CF community that, for the first time in human history, has the medicine and the technology to stay alive longer. Long enough to want and to deserve more from life than simply breathing.

What is the goal of continuing life?

Continuing life.

Since she was very, very young, Ashley has asked little else from life than that she be able to have a child. Initially the problem was that no one thought she’d live past ten. Once she passed that they thought she wouldn’t live past twelve. And so it went. Until she got old enough that her body – hampered by lowered lung-function though it was – would be able to conceive and even carry a child to term.

And so of course worried doctoral hearts palpitated with warning. Blood pressures went up beneath blindingly crisp white smocks. Social workers were brought in. Discussions had. Fingers wagged.

Ashley’s a smart girl, though. Smart as she is tough. [Read more…]