Mary Rankin

Mary has Cystic Fibrosis.  This disease wreaks havoc on your body daily until you eventually need a lung or liver transplant or your lungs give out.  It does not get easier with time.  It does not go away.  It gets harder and harder each year to breathe easily, to stay out of the hospital and to live a normal life.

Cystic Fibrosis causes your body to produce extra sticky mucus that prevents your liver from digesting food and causes repeated lung infections eventually resulting in lung failure.  Mary has been hospitalized 11 times (at least), usually for two weeks at a time, trying to eradicate infections and restore her health.

She takes multiple pills daily to digest her food, prevent nausea and prevent liver problems.  She inhales 3 different medications to help open her airways and improve lung function.  She also uses an airway clearance lung machine to move the extra mucus out of her body and to help her breathe.  She needs to use this twice daily, sometimes more, and even with this, it is hard to maintain adequate lung function. 

CF does so much more than debilitate your body.  For many patients, they not only suffer physically, they also end up with depression, loneliness and hopelessness.  You can’t hang out with others who have CF even though these are the very people who understand the battle you face,  because it is very easy to pass fatal germs to one another.  You try to stay healthy as much as possible because a simple cold can push you over the edge and on into the hospital.  I know it must have been extremely difficult for Mary last year when she spent 3 months of round the clock IV medications followed by 9 months of very hard to tolerate inhaled and oral antibiotics, on top of her normal CF daily regimen.  After completing all of this, she found that her new baseline for lung function was only 65% of what normal lungs function at.  So despite, working hard for a year to eradicate a CF superbug, she still could not restore her lung function.  This is a hard truth to face.

I am asking you to donate to the CF Foundation. (yellow button!)  They fund research and all of her therapies.  I believe that we can help Mary.  Trykafta came out a few years ago that helps to stop the disease from progressing in the lungs.  Mary, unfortunately, is ineligible for this medication due to specific genetic mutations.  It is my hope that something similar to this will be available soon for patients like Mary.

Go to this you tube site to see an older video of Mary:  https://youtu.be/BC25SUBDa0Y

The Great Strides walk is May 20th at Suwanee Town Center Park. Our family is going to participate virtually. Please donate to help find a cure! You can donate here by clicking on the donate button above or send a check made out to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to us….The Rankins, 1480 Land O Lakes Dr. Roswell, GA 30075 and we will turn it in for you.

Thank you from all of us!
Bryan, Kim, MARY, Andy, David and John Rankin