The Fighters Chronicles - Taylor Vanover

MY STORY

I'm 23 years old, from Black Mountain, NC. I was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at the age of 11 months. After being rushed to the hospital from day care with a fever of 103, doctors started to run tests to figure out what was going on. I had a cousin named Misty who had Cystic Fibrosis; so my father asked the doctors to test me for CF. The doctors at first refused; and only wanted to test me for Leukemia and other cancers. Once those came back negative, the doctors finally decided to do a sweat test and it came back that I had Cystic Fibrosis. As soon as Misty, my cousin, found out about my diagnosis; she quickly got in contact with her pulmonologist in Chapel Hill; and we have been going there for CF care since 1994. Growing up, my family helped me to live as normal a life as possible even with Cystic Fibrosis. I was very active, from an early age with competitive fastpitch softball. Through that, we were able to travel all across the Southeast United States, and even one trip to Denver, Colorado. The doctors believe that the physicality of fastpitch softball is what kept me so healthy up until I was around 20. Once I hit her 20s, my health had started to decrease, which actually led to me being intubated and on a ventilator/life support for 8 days in November of 2015. Since that scary incident, my lungs were unable to recoup like they used to; and I was placed on the list for a double lung transplant on May 20, 2016. I received the call for new lungs on May 28, 2016 and I am now recovering and working hard towards breathing easy.