I GUESS you could say that I have been a bit reflective today. I was putting aside my kidney notebook in my bookcase and I came across my scrapbook from my lung transplant successes. Among them was the copy from the speech I gave at "Get Carded" a UCF sponsored activity to promote organ and tissue donation awareness. I thought I would share it with you...

It's funny...I've been giving this speech in my head for weeks, but the actual delivery to YOU is completely different than anything that I've imagined. While I've told this story many times in the last ten months, never have I been so honest and candid, or explored it so deeply. I thought we could make the emotional journey together.

There is a strange string of irony that ties my story together.A sense of irony that I am here at UCF, because this is where my story began. I can not thank you enough for helping me honor the gift I've received and to share it with you.

I don't quite know how I ended up at UCF, probably not what the Admissions office would want to hear, but nonetheless true. I never questioned the road I was on but knew I was headed in the right direction. UCF...practically unheard of in Plymouth, MA, my home some 1500 miles away yet somehow it was so right. It was almost an afterthought that it was U-CF because CF to me was alawys known as Cystic Fibrosis. CF in my case was a genetic, chronic lung disease I've grappled with all my life. CF manifests itself through stichy secretions that clog airways and host virulent infections that eventually scar and destroy the lungs.

For many years CF was both friend and foe. I was torn between two worlds. On the one hand complying with stark, starched hospital realities of taking huge doses of medication, dealing with primitive "pounding" therapies, and being out of school, away from my family and friends for weeks of a time. On the other hand was the romance of rebellion. I could die young and pretty, a sad portrait of lost potential. I won't lie to you. FOr a long time I waivered between the extremes and no matter how much I prayed or bargained, the disease got worse.

From the comfortable vantage point of retrospection, now I would say that I came here (UCF) to make something of myself. I knew that if I could make a difference with JUST ONE person, that I would've made my mark on the world, but I also knew that to achievethis I would have to be responsible for my survival.

TUNE IN TOMORROW FOR THE NEXT EDITION OF "AS I LIVE AND BREATHE"