Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people who treat you right, forget the ones who don't, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, Take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobudy said that it would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it. It's all the small things in life that mean so so much. *'Dance like no one is watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Live like it's heaven on earth

CF 4 days ago

Irish Times

Give cystic fibrosis sufferers a chance at life

Orla Tinsley

Just before Christmas my friend asked me if I could have anything in the universe for Christmas, what would it be? I said Johnny Depp and a chocolate fountain, because I didn't want to say what I really wanted, it was too depressing, writes Orla Tinsley .

What I would have given up my next few Christmas presents for was a cystic fibrosis unit. It sounds like such drivel, but I have never wanted anything more.

On St Stephen's Day, 2007, a girl I didn't know called Tammy died. On December 29th, 2007, a girl I did know called Barbara died from the same condition, cystic fibrosis, a disease affectionately referred to as "the swine" by Barbara. Tammy was 18 and Barbara 24.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that causes respiratory and digestive problems, osteoporosis, diabetes and other complications.

It's a multi-organ disease and in Ireland there is a 1 in 200 chance that two people who have the gene will have a child with cystic fibrosis. We have the highest incidence in the world and I was one of those figures. I am 20 now and one of over 1,100 people in Ireland living with it.

At the end of November another girl I knew called Tracie died aged 24 from the disease. Her death got one column "Tracie feared if care would kill her" in a newspaper.

That was the weekend after the death of socialite Katy French. In any situation it is devastating to lose someone so young but I found myself not talking about Katy like everyone else, because secretly I felt guilty at the anger raging inside me. Of course it is tragic that she died at 24, but to watch it reported and debated so exhaustively wore me down, so much that I felt like arguing about the girl who has been called "intelligent and caring". I never knew her but I was envious of her, or rather the coverage she got after her death.

It made me feel for Tracie, who played music with Phil Coulter in New York, and her family, when she died from an illness she couldn't control. I also thought about my dear friend, sports enthusiast and all round charmer Damien who passed away last year and for my magazine editor, scientist and encyclopedia of knowledge-friend Jean, who passed away last March. I only got to two funerals, and that's just 2007 and just the people I knew of.

Progress has been made on the issue, meetings are being held, talks are ongoing, but we don't need to hear about meetings and conversations. We need a public commitment, a promise that we will have our dedicated unit, and we need it now. As the public mourned Katy French and the lens on cocaine in Ireland started to get focused, I thought wildly that maybe if I got engaged and broke up with a slightly well-known person, did some lingerie modelling and then died, if I fought off my illness long enough, maybe something would be done. Maybe the Taoiseach's aide-de-camp would come to a cystic fibrosis funeral and see something he would remember, something that he might report back. He might see friends and family congregate, he might hear Leonard Cohen's Alleluia or Tina Turner's Proud Mary, funeral songs chosen sometimes years before the funeral took place.

He might see some lucky transplant recipients hovering outside the church waving and mouthing words from a distance to their still suffering friends, that they can't mix with anymore for medical reasons.

And we don't like that word suffering in the cystic fibrosis world, but we are suffering. Watching three of my friends die last year and going on to their tribute pages on Bebo hurts, out of sadness for the event and a personal fear of the unpredictability of life. Each of these people had just as much life as Katy French, and they were making their way through science, through selecting hurling teams, through study. Privately and steadily they mapped their future in a country that seemed to deem them insignificant. It makes me

Well the Challenge continues this year. Thankfully we have €40,000 in the bank so only another €60,000 to go.

I completed all 10 marathons, 4 half marathons and the walk to Galway last year and am presently sitting down to sort out the diary for this year.

At the moment i am looking at possibly another 10 marathons and at least another 4 half marathons.

Raheny, 5 miles in 56 Minutes 36 Seconds.

Agenda is almost complete. So far committed to.

Boston Marathon (42.2KM) 21st April (Completed)
Belfast Marathon (42.2KM) 05th May (Completed)
Edinburgh Marathon (42.2KM) 25th May (Completed)
Cork Marathon (42.2KM) 02nd June (Completed)
Longford Marathon (42.2KM) 24th August (Completed)
Glasgow Half Marathon (21.1KM) 7th September (Completed)
Dublin Half Marathon (21.1KM) 20th September (Completed)
Berlin Half Marathon (42.2KM) 28th September (Completed)
Great North Run Newcastle England (21.1KM) 05th October (Completed)
Chicago Marathon (42.2KM) 12th October (Completed)
Amsterdam Marathon (42.2KM) 19th October (Completed)
Dublin Marathon (42.2KM) 27th October (Completed)
New York Marathon (42.2KM) 02nd November. (Completed)

Still searching for another few races and will update as i find them.

If anyone wished to donate they can be done by either logging onto www.seeoffcf.com or http://www.mycharity.ie/event/droghe...