“I guess everyone has a motto to live by, and our family has found one which has kept us going for a while: Failure Is Not An Option.” My name is Dona Korpics, and I am getting ready to celebrate my 65th birthday. In November 2009, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. Yes, 64 and now I am battling cystic fibrosis. It was a real slap in the face when I first heard it. My first thought was “they are wrong”—people my age don’t get CF. Slow but sure, they started to put things together and then came the “sweat test.”  Okay, now I have CF.   Thanksgiving wasn’t “Thanksgiving.” On top of this diagnosis, my husband of 46 years, Vince, was battling kidney failure, doing the dialysis three times a week, and we were struggling.  Christmas came and went, and we were both too sick to even go to out to enjoy the holiday. Our life was made up of dialysis, doctor appointments, and rush trips to the hospital for both of us.  Prescriptions, doctors, all new things for me trying to go day to day. We were lucky to be able to obtain local transport on our “Pocono Pony,” the bus for all of us who needed to get out but couldn’t do the driving. After discussing it among themselves, our daughter, Jackie and her husband, David,  our daughter, Kay, and her lifetime companion, Amy, and our daughter, Vicky, and her husband, Brian, decided that come spring, we were moving in with Jackie and David,  no questions. Vince and I fought it tooth and nail, but living in the Pocono Mountains where snow piles up, we had no choice. We thought we had things under control for now, but on a sunny day with a little snow falling in March, Vince collapsed and died in my arms before the ambulance and paramedics arrived. I held him close, but I knew he was gone. That is where “MY STORY” really begins. Okay, now I am fighting a life-threatening disease, I am a widow, moving to a new place, new doctors, new hospitals and something called CF. I met with the CF team in Hershey, Penn. It is one-and-a-half hours from my daughter in Allentown,  so it is tough when I go and have to stay. So when I took a turn for the worst this past September, I needed to be admitted to the facilities at the Lehigh Valley Hospital Center in Allentown, Penn.  It may be tough dealing with someone my age, but they are getting used to it. I was never very sick in my life. I married, had four children—three girls and one boy. Then in the last two years, my health took a turn for the worse.  On one emergency trip to the hospital, I was amazed when a new doctor I saw in the ER spotted something because she had spent some time in a CF clinic in Philadelphia, and so the CF diagnosis. It has become a real family thing, with everyone keeping up to date with the new advances that come by and following up with new things they read and find online. I have started a whole realm of new things to keep me occupied. I am on oxygen 24-7, and walking isn’t the greatest, so I do a lot of computer work. I have been updating our family tree and have actually started on a series of books I started years ago. Now I can add another one, about being 64 and having CF. There are new drugs to try and diet changes that have to be made.  I do get out and about on my electric scooter and my portable oxygen. I just completed a new drug therapy, a new inhaled antibiotic which I had hoped will increase my pulmonary function and increase my air flow.  So far it has not totally kicked in, so I guess I will have to try another plan. I am looking forward to the upcoming years when they will come up with a cure for this dreaded CF.  I guess everyone has a motto to live by, and our family has found one which has kept us going for a while: “Failure Is Not An Option.”  It comes from the NASA space mission # 13,  when the spacecraft was in peril, but they all made it through.  I think that is what my life is right now, a mission which has taken a slight turn, and I need to get it back on track. So this is my story, my life and a mission. I want everyone out there who are family members, caretakers, researchers and the professionals who see us on our good days and our worst days to know how much we as patients appreciate what you do for us everyday. And to those of you who help with the fundraising and work on letting the world know how hard this disease is, if you work hard, we will keep working hard too.