Hello, and thank you for taking the time to let me share my story with you. First of all, I would like to introduce you to my family. My name is Jennifer Dwight and I live in Winston, Oregon with my husband Kerry and our two dogs, Maui and Callie. What is unique about our family is that I live with Cystic Fibrosis (CF). CF is a disease that attacks and kills a persons lungs, and currently there is no cure. I do not feel that I have experienced all the things I was placed on this earth to do. That being said, the decision I have made is to become an active member on the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) transplant list.

Currently, my lung function is less than 25%, and I require supplemental oxygen at all times.Life hasn’t always been this way, though. When I became a teenager, my dad and my late Uncle Stan Anderson introduced me to drag racing. My late Grandpa Jack Myers also had an influence on my passion for cars. I talked my parents into letting me drive in the junior dragster series. I remember the day I got to hold up the Wally Trophy after winning a division race at the Coos-Bay drag strip. Upon graduating from Douglas High School, I attended Oregon State University, and I graduated with a Master’s of Arts degree in Elementary Education.

Kerry and I both worked in education until the fall of 2011. At which time, CF was starting to get the better of me. I found myself requiring IV antibiotics about every three months and was having to increase my chest therapies by hours as well. It was then that my doctor told me that the stress of working was making my condition worse. With the support of my family, I decided that I would discontinue working. Now I need eight hours of therapy per day, in order to maintain existing lung function.

I have always lived my life with the attitude that CF is not going to slow me down. I always knew, in the back of my mind, that a lung transplant would someday be a conversation my doctor and I would be having. That conversation came in June of 2014. I had recently spent 27 days in the ICU at Oregon Health & Science University with pneumonia which was complicated by my underlying condition of CF. I required mechanical ventilation on two different occasions for a total of 18 days, while my body fought off this wild pneumonia. In addition, I received a surgically inserted feeding tube during my stay to ensure that I became healthy enough to be put on the donor list.

Receiving a double lung transplant at the University of Washington Medical Center is the only thing that will save my life. This transplant program requires that I live with a caregiver in Seattle for at least three months after being released from the hospital.