LANOR MEHLING

While outwardly healthy-looking, Adaira battles for her life every day.  She suffers from Cystic Fibrosis, a genetic disease that affects how salt moves through the body and leads to sticky mucus, lung infections, and an inability to digest food naturally.

CF Patients have widely varying health.  Some are relatively healthy throughout their childhood, while others have repeated severe infections that require surgeries and hospitalizations.   All CF patients have a daily maintenance routine of inhaled breathing treatments, chest percussion therapy, dietary enzymes, and other medications as needed.  The treatments are mildly painful and very annoying, and must currently be performed for life, every day, often multiple times per day.  And not very long ago, this “life” often ended before adulthood.

Thanks to the work of many good doctors, researchers, the government, and especially the support of people like you, we have made many advances in treatments.  More potent medicines, better applications, and specialized diet products have made both the length and quality of life for many patients vastly longer and better.  We have started rolling out new medicines that target the genetic defect of cystic fibrosis, which while not a cure, have in some cases greatly reduced the severity of the disease.

So why do we still hold the Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis?  Since there are over 1800 gene mutations that cause cystic fibrosis, there are still patients who the medications don’t work on, or who can’t tolerate them.  We can’t stop until we have therapies available for everyone.  Also, the great progress we are making includes some therapies that might really be a “one and done” cure.  But we’re not there yet.  So for Adaira, the over 130 Montanans like her, and the other 70,000 patients worldwide, we keep striding.

This year we are back at the Billing Zoo for a morning of fun, food, and family entertainment!  Admission is free, and donations are encouraged but not required.  An easy way for your company to support our cause is to register a team of your employees online with a $100 donation.  We will include your business in our list of sponsors.  People who register do not need to come to the walk, but we hope everyone and those with families will find it a worthwhile activity for a beautiful summer day.