“Before we dive into the technicalities of bacteriophages, today, as I said, we have a ‘guest speaker’.” the professor began the class, giving me a bit of a nod. 

Just as I stood up, the terror I was feeling inexplicably vanished. Still feigning confidence, I pulled a box of bacteriophages from my camo hoodie pocket. 

“These,” I began, doing my best to project my voice to the entire lecture hall, “... are bacteriophages specifically cultivated to kill Pseudomonas. Most of you have Pseudomonas growing in your lungs and sinuses, but you don’t get sick from it because you’re too healthy to get sick. I, on the other hand, have Cystic Fibrosis. And when I was a teenager, I got really sick from an antibiotic-resistant Pseudomonas infection that completely colonized my lungs and sinuses. If left untreated, within five to ten years, the infection would’ve killed me…”

From there, I went on to describe how and why CF made me susceptible to Pseudomonas, as well as how and why the antibiotics eventually failed. Then, I mapped out the series of insane “coincidences” that led to me gaining access to the phage therapy. 

“My grandma saw an ad for bacteriophage therapy on the side-bar of one of the medical websites she liked to browse… my mom- who is a real estate agent- randomly told one of the clients she had at the time about my illness. This client turned out to be first cousins with Dr. Francis Collins, who was still the head of the NIH in 2017… Dr. Collins confirmed that bacteriophage therapy was a legitimate science… a few days later, my mom and I flew to Portland, Oregon to begin the first few doses of bacteriophage therapy.”

I then brought up Mallory Smith, the 25-year-old Cystic Fibrosis patient who received bacteriophages for her severe lung infection around the same exact time I got bacteriophages for my lung infection. 

“Mallory Smith died.” I remember saying bluntly, “But an autopsy showed that the bacteriophages were killing her infection even after she died… luckily for me, I survived my infection thanks to the bacteriophages. And those bacteriophages protected my lungs long enough for a new, groundbreaking Cystic Fibrosis medication to come out, called Trikafta.”

“Thanks to Trikafta, I am no longer susceptible to Pseudomonas, as far as anyone can tell. So long as I take Trikafta every day, I will remain as healthy and able as the rest of y’all… If I didn’t take those bacteriophages, I probably wouldn’t have died, but I would’ve started Trikafta in much worse shape. God only knows if I would’ve been healthy enough to stand here today, as I am now, if I didn’t get access to bacteriophages when I did…”

The class gave me a standing ovation, which completely floored me long enough for my peers to start raising their hands and asking me questions.