Check her out, she has CF and is amazing

This was posted May 22 in the Deseret News and I thought that is was totally inspiring and wanted all to have a chance to read it. Thank you to you all who told me about it and brought me a copy.


Mandy Rudd, the Hillcrest High School sprinter and hurdler, for instance. She's got rosy cheeks and pale green eyes and a smile that could cause global warming. An opposing coach said it best: "She glows." She's an A student and a National Honor Society member and an athlete on the Hillcrest basketball, volleyball and track teams.

Friends says that if someone is down or having a bad day, she seeks them out. Which is funny because she should be the one having the bad day. She's got cystic fibrosis, a gnarly inherited chronic disease that affects the lungs and digestive systems of about 30,000 in the U.S. A defective gene causes the body to produce a thick mucus that, among other things, clogs the lungs and leads to potentially lethal lung infections.
Mandy takes pills when she eats so she can digest food. She has to add salt to everything she ingests, even Gatorade. Twice a day she puts on a high-tech vest that uses pulsating air to pound her back and ribs to knock loose the mucus that collects in her lungs, which she then spits out.

"I'm good at coughing up loogies," says Mandy, whose younger sister and teammate, Natalie, also has CF.

With CF, it can be difficult enough just to breathe under normal circumstances, never mind sprinting 400 meters all out. "I feel blessed to be able to do sports because most people with CF are too ill to do that," she says. If nothing else, all that heavy breathing helps knock the mucus out of her lungs — she's always running to the sideline to hawk a loogie.

She qualified for state last year in the hurdles and qualified all four years in the 4X400 relay.

CF patients are typically hospitalized two to three times a year for one problem or another. Mandy has been fortunate — she has been hospitalized only three times, including once during her sophomore track season. She was given a pic line — a tube inserted into her arm and threaded up into her chest to deliver medicine directly to her heart. Eager to get back to the track, she begged out of the hospital and was allowed home treatment. Between treatments, she ran track as usual, with the pic line in her arm.
Talk about guts.

The Rudds have a family motto: No regrets. They don't have time for them. When Mandy was born, the Rudds were told the life expectancy of a CF child was 18. The life expectancy now is 30 to 40. Mandy is too busy to think about it. She plans to study dental hygiene at Utah Valley University.

A couple of years ago, the Make-A-Wish Foundation told Mandy to make a wish. She took the entire family to Thailand to ride elephants. Now she serves as a spokeswoman for the organization.

Her philosophy: "Never let the disease be a road block in your life. Never use it as an excuse. I forget I have it. It's just who I am."