When someone with Cystic Fibrosis dies, it hits me pretty hard, but not like grief or depression does. It makes me realize that I'm basically fighting a war, and what makes this even more real, is the fact that I connected so well with several war veterans at a leadership conference in Boston. In fact, one of them even said I was his hero, and that man had practically saved an entire city from terrorists single-handedly. 

It's weird how similar I am to those war veterans, who fought in Iraq between operation Desert Storm and operation Phantom Fury. It's also weird to have a disease that makes people so sick, and kills them when they least expect it. It's weird, and it's also terrifying. No matter how much I hate to admit it, I have to accept that I'm living in the shadow of death, and always have.

During my open heart surgery when I was three days old, I was technically dead. In order to do a surgery like that, my heart had to be stopped and my breathing had to be slowed down. My rib cage was sawed in half and opened up to expose my crucial organs. My lungs and heart heart were replaced with tubes and wires. My heart was basically dissected like a biology lesson, stitched up after the pulmonary valve was cut out, and then put back into its place. My rib cage was glued together, and my organs were restarted. I was expected to recover with nothing but baby Tylenol to take away the pain. Most people can hardly take the recovery pain away with morphine, yet as a tiny newborn baby, I slept, played, and was calmly held despite being in so much pain. I also had Sepsis, although I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the surgery, and on top of that, I had a breast milk allergy, Pneumonia, and a few other known things. CF wasn't even detected until I was two weeks old. By then, I weighed four pounds and was barely being kept alive by wires and tubes. 

I know so much more happened to me when I was a newborn, I just don't know what. I only learned about having Sepsis as a newborn a couple nights ago, when it sprung up in a conversation with my mom. So, as I get older, my past evolves and becomes more clear. In a way, that makes it scarier, but also so much more miraculous. I also found out in that same conversation, that my doctors offered to turn off my machines at one point or another, just because they didn't think I was gonna make it. But, after lots of prayers and desperate medical attempts, I made it. I came out mentally and physically scarred, but I lived, and that's what matters. 

My past explains so much about who I am today. I would've grown up to be a completely different person if I wasn't put through what I was put though.