I have no idea who I am anymore. Honestly, for the past three months, I’ve woken up and said, “Who is this new bitch?” Not to get too science fiction on you, but my body has changed how it works at a cellular level and I am low-key obsessed and high-key confused by it. Let me explain.

I have a chronic illness called cystic fibrosis, which is a progressive, genetic disease that causes persistent lung infections (among other fun things). CF makes me cough all the time and causes my lungs to not work so well, so I feel tired quite a bit. There’s no cure, but there is a new “miracle drug” that’s just been made available on the PBS in Australia. It’s called Trikafta and it’s a “gene modulator” which improves the way salt and water flows through the cells of some people with CF. (An important fact to note is that unfortunately there are some people with CF who are unable to access this treatment yet because of their particular genetic mutation, which sucks.)

Even just half an hour after taking the first dose, I started noticing a difference. Suddenly, I could breathe in so much more deeply. It felt like I’d been driving along the freeway my whole life and just opened up the car windows, wind whipping into places I didn’t even know existed.

I had started running for the first time in my life a few weeks before starting Trikafta, just going on slow ‘baby runs’ where I jogged for a minute or two and then walked for another few minutes, coughing my lungs out to recover. I cannot stress to you enough how much of a non-runner I am – my arms flail about like kangaroo paws and the moment I take off, my lungs tell me “Please don’t”.

On my first run post-starting this new drug, I was one of those absolute freaks who SMILE the whole time. I could just… do it?! My legs were the ones that eventually let the team down, not my lungs. Two months after starting Trikafta, I was polluting my Instagram feed with photos of myself fucking beaming after running 5km non-stop (apologies to my followers but I’m never going to get sick of being able to finally breathe). Now I’m (honestly, I cannot believe I’m typing these words) training to run 10km because I’m just so excited to see what my new body can do.

I used to have huge social anxiety about how bad my cough sounded around strangers (this anxiety was massively exacerbated by the pandemic). But now I rarely cough, and if I do, it’s to clear my throat. This is the main change I’ve really been grappling with. So much of my identity is tied to my cough – it’s always been with me, hanging over my shoulder like a grouchy little muppet. I grew to accept it and strangely, became attached to it. I thought it was cute when my friends said they always knew where I was in the office or at a shop because they could hear my coughs. Now that my cough has vanished, it feels like a chunk of me is missing. I feel like I should only be happy about these positive changes, but when you spend decades of your life accepting that these qualities make you who you are, it can feel a bit weird – sad even – when they’re suddenly gone.

So who the hell am I? I have no idea. I guess I’ll just keep trying to work that out as I push the boundaries of my old body with my new genetically enhanced one, one step at a time.

This story comes straight from the pages of issue 110. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.