Back to School

I received an awesome email today.

Our good friends and great CF supporters over at Abbott Pharmaceuticals have announced their winners for the 2011 CFCareForward Thriving Student Scholarship. The winners (both undergraduates and graduates) will each receive a $2,500 scholarship to continue reaching their educational goals and kicking CF's butt. And, as far as I'm concerned, that's actually some of the best news ever, for a couple of reasons:

1) I know several of the winners in both categories, and I can say with absolute certainty that they are truly deserving of this prize. Congratulations to all of you from the bottom of my heart!

2) These wonderful students and students-to-be are now eligible for an even bigger prize of $19,000. Better yet, WE (as in all the members of the CF community, including every single one of you) get to decide the winners of this extra bonus prize! One Thriving Undergraduate and one Thriving Graduate Student will be selected from among the general winners, and it's up to us to help make that selection.

It's my honor to write about this contest and to support the truly awesome winners of this scholarship. As some of you might know, education is hugely important to me. The CF community is hugely important to me. Making sure that each and every person -- regardless of circumstances, physical traits, disease status, or other so-called "disability" -- knows that he or she is capable of achieving amazing things is unbelievably, incredibly, and (I'll say it again) HUGELY important to me. The fact that these CFers are out there pushing themselves mentally and physically to achieve their educational goals is both inspiring and brave. The fact that you and I have the chance to help them in this pursuit is just the icing on Abbott's already very generous cake.

Please take a moment to visit the CFCareForward Scholarship Home Page and read up on all of these phenomenal individuals. Then do your part and cast your vote for one undergraduate and one graduate student to win the Thriving Student prize of $19,000 toward their educational goals. The contest will remain open until September 30, 2011. You can vote in one of three simple ways:

• Online at www.CFCareForwardScholarship.com
• By text message at 30364
  
• Via toll-free phone numbers at: 1-888-305-9808 (Thriving Undergraduate Student) and 1-888-306-9683 (Thriving Graduate Student)

Help show these folks that we are behind them 100% in creating an even stronger community of awesome, high-achieving CFers. Help show Abbott that we appreciate this generous program to help us reach our goals. Most importantly, help support all of us by showing once again that we, as individuals and even more so as a group, are waaaaay stronger than this disease will ever be. Because together we will keep on proving again and again and again that we are all of us "thriving" in our own way -- and that we plan to keep on doing so for a long, long time to come!

A heartfelt thanks to Abbott Pharmaceuticals for their continued dedication to bettering the lives of CFers through treatment, education, support, and exceptional programs like this one, as well as to all those who applied for the 2011 CFCareForward Scholarship.

Lots of love, light, and learning to all of you, beautiful people.

Top (CF) Chef

Just about everyone who knows me will vouch for three major things about my personality:

1) I rarely, if ever, cook anything edible other than, say, the occasional bowl of cereal or, when I'm feeling super gourmet, some sort of random stir-fry/5th-grade-science-fair experiment hybrid involving pretty much every single ingredient that happens to be in my kitchen at that moment;

2) That the aforementioned lack of culinary skills does not in any way, shape, or form dissuade me from religiously watching just about every cooking show known to man, often DVRing the episodes and re-watching them later (as if the results of the show might have changed?), plate of take-out Chinese food in hand; and

3) That I have been, at times, known to be just a little, tiny, teensy bit competitive . . . although this one is somewhat up for debate. (And I WILL win that debate, I promise.)

All of which combined led me to literally squeal with excitement when I recently received an email from our good friends over at Abbott Pharmaceuticals. Turns out that the makers of Creon (you know, the drug that allows so many of us to eat all that yummy food in the first place) are sponsoring a new program called CFChef. And in my opinion, not a moment too soon.

CFChef is designed to help people with CF meet the intense and sometimes challenging dietary requirements of living with this disease. According to Abbott, the program (which can be found at www.Chef4CF.com) is there to serve both as an educational resource for patients and families as well as a sounding board for the sharing of information and recipes. Awesome.

So where's the fun part?

Turns out CFChef is celebrating its new launch by hosting a CF recipes contest. Now I want you all to close your eyes. Imagine your favorite Top Chef/Iron Chef/Food Network Star. Imagine s/he was cooking a meal for a CF audience and needed your help. You have 30 minutes and a mystery basket filled with dried pasta, brazil nuts, gas-station beef jerky, and ScandiShake powder (chocolate OR vanilla, just because I'm feeling generous). Your time starts...NOW!

Okay, maybe not.

But the contest DOES start now, and the rules are relatively simple. Just go to www.Chef4CF.com and enter your favorite CF recipe before Sept. 28, 2011. The top four winning recipes will be selected by a panel of experts including:

-Suzanne Michel, CF dietitian
-Boomer Esiason, Former NFL Quarterback, TV Personality, and CF Dad
-Michael Symon, Food Network "Iron Chef" (ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod!)
-Ali Christensen, CF Patient and "America's Got Talent" Contestant (Not to mention all-around sweetheart, as I had the honor of meeting her and her equally talented sister this year at the CFF's Volunteer Leadership Conference)

Tell me you're not super excited already. Go ahead, try and say it with a straight face.

Personally, I'm not much of a chef (and my recipe for "Piper's Special Stir-Fry Surprise" is just waaay too top secret to leak out onto the internet), but you can bet that I'll be encouraging my friends and family to enter! I'm also super excited to see (and to try!) some of the recipes that I know all my brilliant, beautiful Breathheads are going to submit. And if sharing and helping out the CF community while gaining personal glory isn't enough motivation for you, ask yourself when else in your life you're likely to have a chance to submit a recipe to a healthcare professional, a sport's star, a singer, AND AN IRON CHEF all at the same time? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Seriously though guys, this is an awesome chance to help out your fellow CFers, strut your stuff, AND have some fun in a program sponsored by one of the CFF's major corporate partners. What more could you honestly ask for?

So here's to community, cooking, creativity, calories, and, above all, to curing CF. Happy cooking, y'all!

A Matter of Great Importance

Okay guys, this is me.


No, I am not posting this so you can laugh at the puffy doctoral hat (although it is one of the weirder traditions in academia, I'll admit). No, I don't think I look awesome in "Columbia University Blue" (although I look darn good in the Columbia hospital gowns, if I do say so myself). And, believe it or not, I am also not posting this to showcase the goofy smiles my family tends to adopt in posed "proud moment" photographs (although that could be a post in and of itself, I promise).

Honestly, I'm posting this picture because it was one of the proudest moments of my life. Because it captures the day when I graduated from law school, CF and all. It captures my family (sans my wonderful sister, who may well have been behind the camera for this picture), and goofy smiles and all, it captures an instant we'd all dreamed about since I was young enough to toddle around starting arguments with people.

And, I'm also posting this because it relates to all of you.

I recently received this message in my inbox:

I came upon your blog and after reading “Quality Control” from March 7^th and seeing the way your parents stressed education and encouraged you to pursue your dreams, I thought you and your online followers might be interested to hear that the 2010 SolvayCARES^SM Scholarship contest is now open for applications through May 15, 2010 at www.SolvayCARESScholarship.com.

The SolvayCARES^SM Scholarship was created to honor young adults with cystic fibrosis as they pursue goals of post-high school education. In 2010, 40 SolvayCARES^SM Scholarship recipients will be announced, and each one will receive $2,500 for use during the upcoming academic year. To celebrate the 18th year of the SolvayCARES^SM Scholarship, this year's Thriving Student Achiever will be awarded $18,000 in place of the $2,500 standard award.

Please feel free to post this contest information on your blog and share it with your community as you see fit. You can find complete information on the scholarship at www.SolvayCARESScholarship.com, including a link to the 2010 scholarship application.

I personally know people who have participated in this scholarship, and I know it can mean a world of difference for CFers interested in pursuing college or graduate school. This year, as you can all see, it is even bigger. I can't stress enough what an honor it is for me to share this link, to encourage the CF community to go out there and get that degree you never thought you'd live to see, or that your doctor told you might not be possible, or that you just never had time to pursue. Because let me just tell you all, without hesitation, that these past few months have taught me the truth of what I always considered a pretty tired and overused cliche:

There's no time like the present. Seriously.

I hope all of you will consider applying, and even more that you'll consider (with gusto) all of the many, many options open to CFers when it comes to life, education, and career. And, perhaps selfishly, I hope that you'll all take lots of pictures along the way.