My friend Cameryn has gone to my church probably as long as I have.

We’ve been friends since middle school. The longer we are friends, the more inseparable we become.

We’ve gone on so many church trips together. We’re always roomed together and stay up til all hours of the night talking. This is how we get so close. We’re inseparable.

I can talk to her about anything. Religion, boys, death, “Pretty Little Liars,” anything.

Cameryn has a lung disease called Cystic Fibrosis or CF for short. CF is when mucus builds up in your lungs causing breathing problems along with other symptoms.

She takes 43 pills a day. Most are enzymes that she must take before every meal.

In the mornings she does her treatments. She wears her vibrating vest for 20 minutes and then her hypertonic saline breathing treatment for 15 minutes.

At night she does her vest again and then a pulmozyme breathing treatment that takes 10 mines. Because of her CF she has CF-related diabetes so she has to check her blood sugar in the mornings and take two units of insulin and at night four units of insulin. She also has multiple inhalers and gadgets and gizmos to vibrate her lungs to keep them healthy.

CF also affects your growth and weight gain, therefore Cameryn is a lot shorter and skinnier than most.

If you didn’t know Cameryn and if you didn’t see her do her treatments or insulin, you wouldn’t know there was something wrong with her.

The thing about CF is that it takes many years off your lifetime. Cameryn will only live til she’s 35 at most. Infertility is also a possibility. Many of her close friends have offered to be her surrogate, if she wanted. I am one of those.

A couple months ago her lung function was down and she had to go to the hospital. They put her on IVs which she had to do at home for two weeks.

About a week ago Cameryn went in for a checkup and they found Pneumonia in her lungs.

She then had to continue IVs while on “house arrest” for another two weeks. She didn’t start school until three weeks after everyone else.

Cameryn is the most upbeat person I know. She doesn’t let the fact that she has a lung disease effect who she is or what she does. She’s just as normal of a person as anyone, in my mind.

When she laughs too hard she’ll start to cough, but she keeps a smile on her face. She’ll see how many of her pills she can take all at once. She’ll talk to you about the most personal stuff even when she’s in the middle of her breathing treatment.

When she takes her insulin shot, she’ll always offer to let me do it and I always oblige. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. She knows that she’s not gonna live as long as everyone else. She’s knows that there’s a possibility of her not going to be able to have kids. She knows that her parents have sacrificed a lot to keep her here. She knows all that. But there’s nothing she can do about it.

She doesn’t complain about having to do her treatments or take her pills. It’s just become part of her normal routine. She can’t change the fact that she has cystic fibrosis. If she could she would. But that’s just who she is. And I’m so glad she’s in my life.