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Breathing through a Straw is a memoir of a father’s fight to do absolutely everything to save his son’s life. On the day of our son’s birth, my wife and I had unknowingly granted Cody a death sentence. He has the worst genetic combination of Cystic Fibrosis genes, delivered to him by his genetic family tree. A many-generational Molotov cocktail that would kill him. We wouldn’t learn this until our son was 6 months old.
When Cody Sheehan was 6 months old his parents Mark and Bridget received the devastating news that they had given their smiling baby boy a genetic death sentence in the form of cystic fibrosis. They were terrified to learn that, at the time, a child with cystic fibrosis would be lucky to survive to their teenage years. The family’s world was turned upside down and they were set on a path to find new treatments and support the efforts to find a cure, all while trying to give Cody as normal a childhood as possible. With good humour and emotion Mark Sheehan tells a story familiar to anyone with a loved one battling a chronic and life-threatening illness: its impact on all family members and the constant cycle of medications, therapies, treatments, and hospitalisations. For sufferers like Cody, every breath required to stay alive was like breathing through a straw. Following successful transplant surgery Cody is something of a miracle—living a full life in his thirties. Cody and his story provide living, breathing hope for others with cystic fibrosis. For Cody and for his fellow ‘cystas’ and ‘fibros,’ the next best thing to a cure is hope.
