TRUE-LIFE
I battled a killer disease and still saw the funny side
Yvonne Hughes, 50, Clydebank
Finishing my school lunch, I went to run around the playground.
Suddenly, a bruiser of a girl shoved into my stomach.
‘I feel sick,’ I groaned, before projectile vomiting. Afterwards, I cleaned myself up and went to class. Being sick was the norm for me, you see.
I was 9 and had been born with cystic fibrosis.
The disease, known as CF, causes sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive system.
It also causes wheezing, 10 coughing, chest infections and difficulty breathing.
Back home, I told my mum, Ann, then 29, what had happened.
‘It’s your bad tummy,’ she said. ‘You must sit and let your food digest.’
I took handfuls of tablets daily, and while my friends ate fancy lunches, I had bread and butter.
Now and then, I’d pick up an infection that would floor me.
The rest of the time, I was full of life and made it through childhood without too many scrapes.
I didn’t want my illness to make me different to anyone else.
Life continued.
Docs thought I only had three or four years left
I hit my 20s and got a job as a waitress, and then later I worked at a radio station as a promotions assistant.
I tried to live life to the full, spending my evenings out partying with mates.
But by the time I was pushing 30, there was no denying the fact that my health was nosediving.
I battled breathlessness, fatigue and infections.
In denial, I didn’t bother using my nebulisers or having physio to help clear the mucus from my lungs, as the docs instructed.
‘You’re burning the candle at both ends,’ Mum said, with a concerned look. ‘Look after yourself,’ my dad, Tony, agreed.
But while my parents always worried, I just tried to stay positive, make jokes.
Only, as the years passed, it was harder.
By 2018, aged 45, I’d lived much longer than I’d once thought I would. If you could call it living… My lung function had fallen to 26% and I was on oxygen most of the time.
By then I was Public Affairs Officer for Scotland at the Cystic Fibrosis Trust but I had to give it up and move in with my parents, who became my carers.
My positive outlook was fading with my health.
Thanks to having CF I didn’t have a partner, I’d never had kids.
Now I’d lost my job and my independence too.
Then I was told I had too many complications to be eligible for a lung transplant.
Sitting at home with Mum and Dad, I held my head in my hands.
‘I might not make my 50th birthday,’ I said.
Docs thought I only had three or four years left.
Soon after, I sat in my bedroom and started writing t
