It’s 6 a.m. in 2019, and I’m running through my to-do list for the day: 

• Do my morning nebulizer, vest treatments, and my morning infusion through my PICC line. 
• Wake up my toddler with a hug, change her diaper, and get her dressed. 
• Make us both breakfast and take my morning pills. 
• Pack both of our bags for the day, drop her off at daycare, and then commute 50 miles to vet school. 
• Balance a day of lectures on animal physiology, dissection labs, and studying — with breaks in between to do my PICC line infusions. 
• Participate in my mock client communication lab, where I pretend to be a veterinarian helping a pet owner navigate a challenging situation while my peers and mentor observe and critique my communication skills. 
• Talk to the dean of students about my upcoming rotation day on the large animal medicine service. (I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to be handling sick cattle and sheep while I have a PICC line in my arm. Good thing she always has my back — we’ll figure it out.)
• Commute back home, spend some quality time with my toddler, feed us both dinner, and get her to bed. 
• Do my evening treatments, then study for two exams coming up this week. 
• And finally get enough sleep to do it all again the next day!

Looking back now, I don’t know how I managed it all. Over the course of five years, I raised one, then two children, managed my cystic fibrosis through exacerbations and a global pandemic, and graduated with honors from veterinary school to achieve my lifelong dream of becoming a veterinarian. 

I didn’t manage it alone. I received invaluable support from my husband, friends, the administration at my veterinary school, and my care team at the Stanford Adult Cystic Fibrosis Center. 

Since childhood I had dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. I adored the menagerie of pets that passed through our home, including cats, dogs, and rabbits, as well as the more unusual ones, such as chickens, geese, African clawed frogs, and Madagascar hissing roaches. As a teenager, I spent weekends and school breaks working at my local animal shelter and volunteering at wildlife rehabilitation centers. But as I grew from a chronically ill child to a chronically ill young adult, the idea of managing years of intensive schooling and a career known for its long hours and exposure to zoonotic diseases seemed like a pipe dream. While I was fortunate to have relatively mild-to-moderate CF, I still required regular hospitalization and outpatient treatment to stay healthy. So, in college, I made what felt like the most practical decision: to pursue a “desk job” more likely to be compatible with my CF.

However, while in college, I also met the man who would become my husband. He encouraged me to live with the mindset that CF would not limit me — that I should proceed as though I was bound to succeed. And in the early years of my career, when I found that I couldn’t shake the idea of pursuing a career in veterinary medicine, he encouraged me to take the leap.

So I did — leaving my stable office job to spend my days working as a veterinary assistant, accumulating experience to enhance my vet school application. My evenings were spent studying organic chemistry, physics, and microbiology in a post-baccalaureate program that provided the necessary prerequisite courses to apply. Along the way, I got married and had my first child — another dream of mine fulfilled and made possible through the power of modern medicine. And so, when I finally received the call that I had been admitted to veterinary school, it didn’t quite feel real. 

Veterinary school is often referred to as “drinking from a firehose.” The amount of information that students are expected to master in a short time is extraordinary. The days are long, but I was bolstered by both my love of the learning materials and my newfound family of vet school classmates. My classmates became friends whose unwavering support carried us all through some of the most demanding — and exciting — years of our lives. Nonetheless, the demands of balancing motherhood, vet school, and my health took a toll. 

The sleep deprivation, stress, and long hours resulted in a more rapid decline in lung function than I had ever experienced before. I was requiring more frequent and longer hospitalizations and outpatient IVs. Medications weren’t having the expected effect. After a severe health decline during my second year of vet school, my husband and I had a heart-to-heart. I needed to either lower my expectations for myself or give up veterinary school altogether.

Then, just when I needed it most, there was a miracle in the form of two orange pills each morning and a blue pill at night.

Trikafta, the first highly efficacious CFTR modulator for my CF mutations, became available to me in December 2019, and I began taking it immediately. Within hours of my first dose, I could feel that I was breathing in a way I had never before experienced — the way healthy people breathe. This, finally, was the payoff for all those years my parents had spent managing my medical care and fundraising through Great Strides, Celebrity Ski, and countless other CF Foundation events.

Trikafta has given me many gifts. The gift of finishing veterinary school and now working as a general practice veterinarian. The gift of my second and third children, and the uncomplicated pregnancies that brought them into the world. And the gift of feeling as though I have lived two different lives with CF. The first was when I had to work incredibly hard each day to survive. The second is seeing my FEV₁ hover around 100%, my nebulizer and vest gather dust in my closet, and having the energy to play with my children and achieve my career goals. 

Of course, living with CF means becoming accustomed to uncertainty, and I know my health can change. My lungs and pancreas still bear the scars of years of infection and inflammation. But right now, I’m living the life I dreamed of, and that’s no small thing.

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