CF is a genetic disease that attacks the lungs, the pancreas, and other organs. It makes breathing harder and infections more dangerous, and for most of its history it meant a short life. About 40,000 people in the U.S. live with it. Roughly 105,000 worldwide. There is still no cure.

For me it's meant countless hospital stays and more lung infections than I can count. It's not the part people see, but it's the reality.

I've known that reality my whole life. I've also watched it change. The treatments that let me live the way I do didn't exist a generation ago, and they didn't appear on their own. They were funded, one donation at a time, by people who decided this disease shouldn't get the last word.

On March 7, 2027, I'll run the Tokyo Marathon as one of only eight people chosen for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's team there.

I'm running for the people in our community who can't be at that start line. And I'm running for everyone who gets that diagnosis after me, so the picture they're handed looks a little different than the one I was.

Anything raised here goes toward the research and care that got me here, and that will one day get all of us to a cure. If you'd like to be part of that, I'd be grateful. If not, that's completely okay, cheering me on or sharing my page means just as much.