Hi, I’m Jamie. I currently live in Mandurah, WA and I am a 27 year old who was diagnosed with CF from a very young age. I have always tried not to let my CF get in the way of things that I wanted to do, which is why doing all the right treatment is very important.
As I got older in my teenage years I was always in and out of hospital until my CF started to ruin my lungs quite badly. I ended up having a double lung transplant in 2011 which was quite a scary time but now I can look back and see how it has changed my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.
I am currently working two jobs and playing sports like I have always wanted to do.
Jamie answered the following member question about how he deals with coughing during exercise.
‘When I exercise I sometimes cough. Do you ever cough or have to spit up mucus when you exercise? Do you get embarrassed? How do you deal with it?’
Before my transplant, exercising with CF was difficult at times because of having to cough and spit up mucus. I found it was embarrassing at times but I realised that coughing the mucus up was helping me in the long run to stay as healthy as I could be.
If I had to cough up anything in front of people I would either just walk away and use a tissue or the closet thing I could find. Otherwise telling others why I had to cough was maybe the best way and be less embarrassing for me too.
Interview from Rozee, 2015.