Raising Awareness for Cystic Fibrosis
Raising Awareness for Cystic Fibrosis.
When your child is diagnosed with a chronic, life shortening disease and you slowly get over the initial shock and heart break, what do you do next? In all honesty, whatever gets you through everyday. There is no right or wrong way to deal with the grief and everyone is completely different. From my own personal experience, looking after Norah and trying to keep her healthy is not enough. I need to share our story with anyone that will listen. I need to be raising awareness for Cystic Fibrosis and help people to understand what it means for our family.
Cystic Fibrosis Western Australia.
When the twins were still only very young, I was flicking though a magazine that we get every few months by our local Cystic Fibrosis (CF) charity organisation. I noticed an article about joining up for a walk and getting people to sponsor you, to raise funds to go towards equipment and future research into treatments for CF. In my eyes this was not only a way to raise money, but to share our story with the world.
12km and $5700.
Family and friends signed up to walk with us and I posted on Facebook a couple of times a week. I shared pictures of Norah’s daily medicine and breathing treatments. I shared the heart breaking truth of what Cystic Fibrosis is and what it is doing to Norah’s little body. People took interest, they were shocked at what we did everyday to keep her healthy and they donated. We walked 12km with red tutus on and with the double pram and we raised just over $5700. At the end of the walk I vowed that the following year would be bigger and better and there would be more RED.
For Norah in 2018.
We did get a bigger team. I organised Cystic Fibrosis T-shirts and we had way more red. We had our team name, ‘For Norah’ printed on the back of our shirts. Our team stood out in the crowd and the announcers at the event were talking about Cystic Fibrosis. In 12 months we have raised just over $10000 for CFWA and our story is reaching all corners of the world and we are raising awareness for Cystic Fibrosis thanks to social media.
In the big scheme of things I know that this is only a tiny contribution, but we are doing it and I am proud of what we have achieved. If you love someone that has Cystic Fibrosis or any other condition for that matter, don’t be afraid to give anything a go. You CAN raise awareness and you CAN help raise money. You might just surprise yourself.
If you would like to donate to Cystic Fibrosis Australia please click on the following link. Any donation, big or small would be greatly appreciated by everyone affected by CF https://www.cysticfibrosis.org.au/donate