Almost everyone in the CF community knows who Andy Lipman is and all the contributions he has made. Andy, and his older sister Wendy were born with cystic fibrosis. Wendy died when she was only 16 days old. The Lipman family founded The Wish for Wendy Foundation, in her honor. Andy has a youngster sister Emily, who was adopted. To raise funds for his Foundation Andy has written several books that fall under the CF Warrior Project name. The CF Warrior Project is what Andy calls a movement. He has raised millions of dollars to help fund research and raise awareness.
Andy and his wife Andrea live in Atlanta, Georgia with their teenage daughter Avery, and son Ethan.
Andy’s 4th book: The CF Warrior Project: 65 stories of Triumph Against Cystic Fibrosis Volume Two can be purchased on Amazon.
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Email us at: thebonnellfoundation@gmail.com
CF Warrior Project: https://www.cfwarriorproject.org/meet-andy/
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Laura: Just about everyone in the CF community knows who Andy Lipman is. Andy and his older sister Wendy were born with cystic fibrosis. Sadly, Wendy only lived 16 days and that's when the Wish for Wendy Foundation was born. Andy also has a younger sister, Emily, who was adopted.
To raise funds for his foundation. Andy has written several books that fall under the CF Warrior Project name, and Andy calls it a movement. He has raised millions of dollars to help fund research and to raise awareness. Andy lives in Atlanta, Georgia with his wife Andrea, and teenage daughter Avery and son Ethan. Andy's fourth book, the CF Warrior Project, 65 Stories of Triumph Against Cystic Fibrosis Volume Two, can be purchased on Amazon and other book sellers. Andy Lipman, thank you so much. Welcome to the Living with Cystic Fibrosis Podcast. Great to be able to talk with you cuz we see each other every day on social media and have been in touch. And it's wonderful to be able to talk with you and share the wonderful news about your latest book.
But first I wanted to catch up and get everyone else caught up a little bit about. How are you doing? How's your health? How are things going?
Andy: Things are going pretty well. I just had Covid for the first time. I was Covid positive a couple weeks ago, and luckily, I did all right. It was all up in my head and everything.
And it took about a week and a half to get through it, but I did. But health-wise, I'm 49 years old with cystic fibrosis. What can I complain about? Things are going pretty well.
Laura: And that's wonderful to hear? Do you have plans yet for your 50th, fabulous milestone for everyone, but especially people with cystic fibrosis.
Andy: Yeah, I think my wife and I are gonna do, she's starting 50. Oh wow. I just told her age. Whoops. That's okay. It's okay. We're probably gonna have a birthday together. We're gonna celebrate together. Have a big ole, event, and just really enjoy the milestone. It's crazy. I never would've thought I'd reach 50.
As hopeful as I am. I was just hoping for 30. Here being almost 50 years old and with so many breakthroughs in the CF community and so many more to come, it's just really an exciting time and I'm looking forward to turning the big 5-0.
Laura: And so when you were old enough to realize what Cystic Fibrosis was, were you thinking 30 was the dream? Is that what you're saying?
Andy: Yeah, not necessarily. Then I was just scared to death, because when I was about eight or nine, I had read an encyclopedia that people with CF don't normally live to the age of 25. Later I would find out the life expectancy when I was born was only 16 years.
So to me I didn't really have an age in mind. I was just scared. But when I got to college, when things finally started to improve in college, yeah, I did start to think of, I'd really liked to go beyond that, and then when I hit 30, I was like, maybe I could easily hit 40. And then now I'm just like, I'm just gonna live every day and, whatever happens.
But I've been pretty fortunate, so I'm just, taking it day by day. I'm not always optimistic every single day. I think that's impossible for someone. I think sometimes when we see social media, we're like, God, he's always happy. No, everybody goes through their tough times. I deal with depression and anxiety, and I'm always open about that, but for the most part, I'm doing really well and I'm just looking at it every day as a blessing and a gift.
Laura: And you talk about mental health. I go to therapy every week as a caregiver of two daughters with cystic fibrosis. I think it's really important so that I can support them. Tell me how the therapy helps you and your mental health. And by the way, I feel like you're honest on social media. You're all over the place on all platforms, and I do feel like you share your ups and downs on social media, and I appreciate that.
For you, what does therapy mean? Does it mean going every week? Does it mean pumping yourself up? What does it entail for?
Andy: Sure. I've always said I use this analogy, I'm a big baseball fan, so what I say is the greatest pitcher in the world still needs a pitching coach. And for me, not the greatest pitcher in the world, not the greatest anything in the world, but.
Just a regular human being needs somebody to get in my ear and to help me when I'm going through a tough time. And sometimes I go every week, sometimes I go every few weeks. Sometimes I go monthly. It just depends on how I'm doing. But I just need that to stay as optimistic as possible and I do see in a way, and this is not to be arrogant or anything like that. But I do see myself as somebody in the CF community who inspires other young CF patients or their parents. And I want to stay as positive as I can, but at the same time, like you mentioned, it's good that I'm as honest as I can. I tell people when things are tough and maybe I lost somebody with the disease who's a good friend of mine, maybe younger than me, maybe my age.
And that's very difficult and I deal with regular normal stuff. It's not just the CF side of it, I've got two teenagers, I've got a wife, and we all deal with our own things and that's just what therapy has done for me. It really does help and I feel I work out to get my physical strength. I do my CF treatments to keep my health, my lungs, and my digestive system. So I use the therapy to help.
Laura: 49 years ago there wasn't newborn screening for your parents. Did they find out that you and your older sister had cystic fibrosis?
Andy: Yeah, so my sister was born three years before me, and she just wasn't growing and I think they described her as sickly and so I guess they did the sweat test then and knew that she had CF. I think she also had a blockage in her intestines, the meconium ileus. And so they knew, and she only lived 16 days, so it's a little bit blur from what they've told me.
Some of it. When I was born three years later, I also had meconium ileus. And they knew there was a chance that I would have actually, a pretty good chance that I would have CF. That was the 25%. But knowing that my sister had it before me they knew what to look for. And so I went, had the blockage removed Eggleston near Emory Hospital and later on they diagnosed me after the sweat test with cystic fibrosis.
So it was one of those things, there was a newborn screening and that's unfortunate. There are a lot of people have gotten through without being tested and knowing that they had CF and as well. I've written books about people who've gone even past 50 or 60 years old, with the disease. And finally finding out they have CF after all these little symptoms they've been going through back and forth.
And they're like, oh, that's it. And it's I can't even imagine going even a day without knowing. And I've been fortunate, it's a mixed blessing. It was unfortunate I had it, it was fortunate they found it so soon. .
Laura: Absolutely. Since then, you and your family have raised awareness about cystic fibrosis and now your fourth book is out.
The CF Warrior Project. 65 Stories of Triumph, again, cystic Fibrosis Volume two. And people can purchase it on Amazon, and I'm honored to be in this book. It's wonderful. And I can't wait to read the stories of everyone else who's in it. Tell us how you decided on a volume two?
Andy: First off, when I wrote the first one, there were so many people we had, I hate to say it, we had to leave off because there was a certain limit that they gave us.
And that was the first time I'd written a book and I felt bad that I told people, Hey, I'm gonna put as many of you as I can in this book and I'm looking forward to it. Then all of a sudden when you talk to a publisher, hey, there's a limit there's a certain amount of pages you can have. And so I was like I gotta do a few more, at least, and get everybody I can in.
And after the first book, I really almost instantly started working on the second book and started reading online about people and saying, oh, this would be a good person to have, has a different story. It's not necessarily the story itself, but how different they are from each other. Is it because you want tell where if somebody with cystic fibrosis really, hey, this person has more similar stories to me.
And so that's what I was doing and we really found some great stories. And I also want to do some, not just about people with CF, but like yourself, someone who advocates for those with CF or has a family member with CF or started a foundation for CF or just anything that is around CF. In fact, in the book we interviewed two of the geneticists that came up found the gene for cystic fibrosis.
And that was really exciting to hear their story. I'd read about it before in different documents, but I'd never really heard their stories. Where they came from. How did this become a big deal to them? Why did they want to do it? I wanted to tell the story behind it. When you read this book, you'll see these are stories.
This isn't just I have CF and I'm alive, or I have CF, or my family has CF, and so that's why we started the Foundation. How it started, why we got involved, what have we done to stay involved? And that's why I wrote it. I think the first one was really good and I loved it, but we didn't really tell as much of the stories as we could have.
And I think this time we tell a lot more of the story and we tell it from, like I said, people with CF and people who just have a lot of family or friends or somebody with cystic fibrosis that they wanna advocate.
Laura: Like I said, I'm really excited to read it. I know Beth VanStone, one of the CF moms in Canada is in the book and so many others. And it sounds like Dr. Francis Collins is in the book also who we all love for everything he's done for cystic fibrosis, raising awareness, discovering the gene, he was here at the University of Michigan. For a long time and while the gene was discovered.
Andy: So yeah, you have a connection there.
Laura: Absolutely. Yeah. He did a podcast with me too about once the new CF modulator came along and about hope for the future as well.
So I can't wait. So tell me some more about all the people who are in your book and what you hope people get out of it.
Andy: Sure. And so we have a wide variety of people. We have Dorothy Tolkin, who, she's one of the founders of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in her nineties now. And she has a daughter with cystic fibrosis who amazingly is still here, still alive, doing it wonderfully.
So we tell her story and how she got involved with CF. We tell stories of Beth Vanstone, you mentioned, how she has fought for drugs to be approved in her country in Canada. We have celebrities like Colton Underwood. Colton Underwood was the Bachelor a couple of seasons. And he talks about, he started a Colton's Legacy Foundation.
They donate vests to people around the United States, and his goal is to get all 50 states. And what he does is he goes and visits, brings the vest and it helps people that can't afford a vest. And it's really wonderful. And then there are others. We have transplant survivors. We have one woman, Amanda, who's had three double lung transplants and she's around 30 years old.
We've got a couple others too. Dylan Mortimer, who does the book cover for us, is one of the most famous artists especially with cystic fibrosis in the country, in the world actually. And he does the helps with the cover, but he's also had two double lung transplants and he's done an amazing job.
And so there's just so many different stories. We've got a few other celebrities. Justin Baldoni, excuse me, who is the director of Five Feet Apart, the biggest box office hit for something related to cystic fibrosis. And it's just, it's really cool all the stories that we have around these people that, Justin became really close friends with Claire Wineland.
Claire, was one of the most famous CF, I would say most famous CF people around the world before she passed away. And Justin developed a very deep friendship with her. And he started, he did the movie basically in memory of her. And so it's really cool. All these people. And then you got Melissa Yeager.
Melissa is Claire's mom and Melissa's in the book as well, and tells her story and now she started. She's kept a foundation going and does things like the Clarity ball to raise money for those with cystic fibrosis, those in the hospital, which was something that Claire always wanted, and that was the foundation they started together.
So it's really cool. All the people.
Laura: When you read it and have been editing it and going through it, I know you have always thought we have a wonderful CF community, but when you're reading this and going through it all and talking to people, are you just regenerated as far as optimism goes with everybody in all that they're doing?
Andy: It's inspiring. It really is. And I'm not just saying that cause I wrote it or anything like that. I'm saying it because maybe I wrote it, but a lot of the people, when they gave me their story, they were writing it themselves. They were telling me their story and I told to my best ability, their version. And it's really, it's so you can feel it in your heart.
All these people, all the love that they have for the cystic fibrosis community and those that they do this for, or like I said, we have a lot of people that are patients with CF who either maybe they've lost a sibling to CF. We have one who has sadly lost a parent who had CF and they will not stop until we have a cure.
And it's really, it's just great to see that the passion, love for the community. And that's why we say, for our CF community, that's why we're doing it. That's why all these people are still involved.
Laura: As the title says, you have 65 stories in it. Do you have pictures in there as well and is it equally people with CF and parents, or is it just a mix up of however it worked out?
Andy: So it's a little bit more people with CF, but not that much more. And there are pictures of every single person involved, some of them with their families depending on if they wanted to put their families in the picture or just happened to be, it was the picture that seemed to work really well for the book.
But we have a lot of people, there's 65 different pictures and they're actually 66 cuz there's one where it's a husband, wife team that are both. One is a researcher; one is a doctor. Or one is a scientist, one is a doctor in Israel and they're husband and wife. And they work together and they've, started working on all these drugs and they worked in the United States.
In fact, one of them, the wife. She was one of the ones who helped find the gene when she was working in Canada. So it is really quite cool, all these different relationships, different countries. We have a bodybuilder who has CF. She is in Ireland. And so it is just all different types of people.
We've got someone who's won so many medals at the transplant games. And she stopped swimming after she'd had her transplant and then all of a sudden she got inspired to do it again and she's won all these medals and it's just incredible the different types of stories that are involved. I think that people will really get a kick out of it.
Laura: It is, and I can't wait to get my hands on the book because I cannot wait to go through all these stories. I think it will be so inspiring to people who have CF or caregivers like myself, parents of kids with cystic fibrosis. Are you getting feedback from parents like myself or people that are in your book who are excited to be featured?
Andy: Absolutely. We've got about, I think about five or six parents that are in it. Four or five moms and one dad. And they're all really excited. And this is something, that, that was another reason I wrote it, is I lost my mom in November of 2020 when I just started writing the book. And one of the things I remember is how inspiring she was for the CF community.
She and my dad won an award for 50 years of doing things in the CF community from the CF Foundation, the Georgia Chapter. And so I remembered that and I really wanted, so I dedicated this book to my mom. And I know she had a perspective of how tough it is to be a parent with CF and she would talk to other parents that would just had newborns with CF.
And so that was the reason I really wanted to tell it from the parent side as well. Me being a parent myself, but not understanding what it's like to have two kids or one kid even with CF. I wanted to just tell it from the parent side and that, and we do, we tell it from parent side, we tell it some from the sibling side, and we really want to get it out there that there's so many different sides to this.
A CF warrior. I think originally when people heard the term CF Warrior. They thought, oh, it's somebody with CF. But to me, it's not just someone with CF, it's someone who's fighting CF. And that's doesn't necessarily mean, that's because you have it in your system, in your genes. It's because you have someone you love who has it, and you want to push this for them.
You wanna advocate for them. And so that's why I wanted to make sure there were people, not just with CF, but those who fight for those with CF in the book.
Laura: And I really appreciate that and other moms I've talked to and dads as well, because I think for a lot of us, I never thought, there's no trauma for me.
This is my kid's trauma. They're the ones with CF. I'm fine. And then you realize all the trauma you've gone through with your kids and how you have to be the one who really doesn't blink through it all. You have to be strong and get them through until their adult years and then still through the adult years, helping them transition into doing their own insurance and all of that. I think sometimes you don't realize, and then you see someone else's story and you're grateful that, oh my gosh, we do carry a lot. Yeah. Did you find that in reading?
Andy: Sure. I really did. And that again, remind me of my mom, who, when, sometimes I would tell her what's going on with me or my health. She would start crying, and she's either happy or sad.
If I was going at a tough time, she would just be like, Andy, we're gonna get you through this. We fought since you were born, all this. But if things were good, she's like I always knew, that you would be through this and all this. And one of the things I said about my mom is as tough as it was to lose her, and it was awful, that she didn't have to bury a second child. To me, that was so important. She buried my sister. They had to bury my sister, but she didn't have to bury me. And that to me, I think in some ways, deep down she would be happy about that. I, ugh, miss her terribly. But this book, a lot of it was me thinking about what would my mom want to know about these people?
What was her perspective? And when I hear like a story like yours. Or Claire's mom or Maddie's mom. I think about, geez, what did they go through? When you're a kid you don't think about it as much. What did my mom or dad go through? You're thinking “this stinks.”
You're thinking about I have a life expectancy. I have this, I have that. I have to do my therapy every day. I have to take pills. But you don't think they have to help you learn to take pills. They have to do your therapy. You know, your postural drainage every day, right? But you don't think about that cause you're a kid and all you think about is what are my friends gonna think?
After reading all this, after reading these stories and really getting into 'em, it is, ugh, you really start to feel it. You really start to see what they went through. And now being a dad myself, and anytime my kids are dealing with something now I think, ugh, what did my mom and dad have to deal with?
It really makes you think, it hits the heart strings. It really does.
Laura: I know your kids are teenagers. Did they read the first book? Do they have any interest? They're teenagers. They might not, they may just think dad's normal. He just does. You do your best every day, and they're used to it. But do they look forward to the books? Do they understand as much as they can for being teenager?
Andy: To be honest with you, it's not really their thing. They've lived with CF all their life, with me having it. And so I think for them, their normalcy is, yeah, me doing a vest.
They're used to it. Me taking pills, they're used to it. Me coughing, they're used to it. I don't know that they necessarily are interested in reading it. I always give them copies of every book that I write and I say, if you wanna read it, you read it. But I get it. If you don't, it's not, doesn't have to be your thing.
But both of them do a lot for charity. That's what makes me and my wife really happy is they're both very charitable kids. But as far as CF, I think it's so real to them. They see it all the time that they take a break. But I will say, For both my kids, especially my daughter. The funny thing is you're like, my dad is just like everyone else, but he has a TikTok.
So what's funny is her friends see the TikTok and they're like, we watch your dad all the time. She's like oh my God. But I try to make CF fun. You know what I mean? I don't come home yeah, tough day to day, I try to make it as positive as possible. I don't talk about it a lot. I did when they were kids. Not a lot, but I try to inform them what it was and all this. And I think I have a couple videos on YouTube where I talked to them and explained to them what CF was, what CF is, and have them tell me themselves what they think it is.
And so that's what we did. But beyond that, no, I don't let them get involved unless they want to be, I don't want to be the one to push it on them if they wanna learn more about it or give. My daughter has helped with Wish for Wendy, which is the charity we started. My son has gotten a little interested and when are we gonna do another softball tournament?
Since Covid. We stopped doing them for a while. They care. They love me. But at the same time, I think they're teenagers and they have their own things that they deal with. And so I don't push it on 'em, but they're great and I'm happy with who they've become and who they're going to be hopefully.
Laura: And that's wonderful. I was also thinking about newly diagnosed parents and why this book would be good too. Because you get such a range of experiences and knowledge and you're so overwhelmed at diagnosis. And initially we, my girls are 25 and 28, so we didn't. Initially a lot of parents to talk to.
You're figuring out who the CF community is and how to find them, and I think this book, and I'm sure you would agree, will give them hope and a range of information, do you think?
Andy: Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the goals of this book is to give hope. Every book that I've written, one of my main goals, hope you know, is to give people hope because as I like to say, it sounds kind of ironic, almost, now. I tell people, if you're gonna have CF, this is the time to have it. Yeah. Because there's so many breakthroughs going on there. So many things to look forward to. We're, I feel like we're so close to a cure. I want people to have hope. And sometimes I don't have to say a word because I'm 49 years old with cystic fibrosis.
What more hope can you need? But not everyone's story is the same. And I tell people, some are like why do some people pass away before you, and all this? I'm like, listen, I credit it to hard work and doing my stuff and all this stuff, but there's dumb luck too. I've had dumb luck and I'm grateful for it.
There are people who have worked just as hard as me, maybe even harder, and it didn't work out. But that didn't mean that CF beat them. It just meant that their body just couldn't handle it any further. Their minds, they had it, they wanted it. And we dedicate this book in many ways to people with CF who have passed away because they have really helped those of us that are still here. You don't lose the rank of CF Warrior because you pass away.
You always keep that. And so we have so many CF warriors to be grateful to and we continue to do that. There is a lot of hope, and yes, we do tell a few stories of people who have passed from CF. but like we said, things have gotten so great with research and everything else that people are living longer and stronger.
We got people in their seventies now I read about, there was somebody in their eighties with cystic fibrosis and it's just, it's amazing. And one day people won't say, I'm 75 years old with cystic fibrosis. They'll just say, I'm 75 years old. And that's the goal. I may pass away one day, but it's not gonna be because of cystic fibrosis.
It's just gonna be with cystic fibrosis the way I think of it.
Laura: That's a beautiful way to put it. Tell us a couple more stories of people that have CF that you have featured in your book. I know they all inspire you, but maybe some that you can think of now that stand out a little bit.
Andy: Sure. I would say, and mentioned her before, Erin.
Erin is someone, she has CF she's had a double lung transplant, and at first after she had the transplant, she had scars from the transplant and she at first was really embarrassed by them and tried to hide them. And now, she is showing them off and saying, this is what I've done. I've had a transplant, I've survived.
I'm back in. I'm swimming, I'm win winning medals and I'm not ashamed of this. She did a Sports Illustrated type shoot where she showed her scars. She is proud of who she is and what she's been through, and I just, I love those kinds of stories. Just people who inspire. And then there's somebody just turned 60 actually.
From Arkansas. His name's Terry and Terry wasn't diagnosed with CF until his mid-fifties. And the reason he didn't get diagnosed is he is African American.
Laura: Oh, Terry Wright, you're talking about.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. That's Terry wright. They were saying you couldn't have CF and finally they diagnosed him with it and now he started his own foundation for African Americans with cystic fibrosis.
He and his wife Michelle, have started their own foundation and it's amazing and they've gotten all these people. And they've won many awards like the CF Star in Arkansas. And these are the kind of stories I love. That people, they just keep fighting and they don't give up. And yet they have cystic fibrosis.
And there's another gentleman named Travis. You may know who Travis is. Travis has his own foundation in Florida and he has a daughter with cystic fibrosis.
Laura: Piper. Yep.
Andy: Yep. He has two sisters with cystic fibrosis and. Recently was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, so all four of them have CF in different genes.
So it's really a cool story and he tells how he came up with Piper's Angels foundation and how they had something called Crossing for a Cure. It's just amazing these stories of all these people who continue to inspire that. It started out, he was just, he was doing it for his daughter and look what, he's got it too, and he's got family with it and they're raising a ton of money for this.
And just really proud of all these different people. And Terry, I'm so proud of him and his wife. And it's funny when you say, can you name one? I could name all 65 stories. And it would not be that hard for me to do it. Especially the moms. The moms, it just really, oh my gosh. It just really, yeah.
Melissa, Claire's mom. Melissa Yeager, her story. You just see all she's been through, but she continues to fight for Claire, and that's, it's just wonderful.
Laura: And she's keeping Claire's story alive, which I love. I love all the cross promotion. Okay. First of all, we all know the same people. We have such a tight knit CF community, and Melissa learned how to board on the, I guess it was the ocean with Piper's Angels helped them raise money. She did that. It's just wonderful. She trained for it and worked with Travis and we all worked together. And then you're featuring everybody's stories.
Andy: Yeah. I don't know if you've heard of the Casolinas. Do you know the Casolinas?
Laura: I don't, no.
Andy: So Marguerite, she had a daughter with CF and has a son with cf. The daughter passed away. The son has CF; he's now a father. And it's amazing. I She's raised so much money for the CF Foundation in the US.
She and her husband have had so many different positions. Mark, her husband, and it's just amazing. All these people, all these stories. Again, another parent who's going out there and has taken, sadly a loss, but has turned it into Championing for the cause, and she has done so much and like you, like Melissa, like Beth, like Travis.
There's so many people out there. That have done so much. Like Doris, 90 something years old, has still has a daughter here with CF and she's, helped found the foundation. We actually also interviewed Bob Bell. Bob was the CEO of the CF Foundation. He's a scientist himself, helped invest in all these companies and all these people have done so much for the CF community.
And that was the other reason is I want people to know a little bit more about the history and why these people got involved.
Laura: Yeah, I think it's fantastic. Also, is it correct, the funds from your book, do they go to the Wish for Wendy Foundation, your foundation? The proceeds?
Andy: It's a not-for-profit book, so all the profits will go to any CF related charities.
We have our own foundation to wish for Wendy Foundation, so some will go there, but there are other foundations involved. Like everybody in the book, we look at, your foundation, we've got so many others, we're gonna give money to that, just gotta make a profit, which I believe we will on this book., but either way, we're gonna give funds to all these foundations because they're doing what we want to do and that's to help the CF community. And it's all different. As there's some that are raising for research. There's some who are raising for athletics. There's some for college scholarships, there's some for help in the hospitals.
There's some for just financial help. There are people that go through so much, help to get a vest. Or medication, to afford it. It's really there so many different realms in the CF world that, we want to give in some form or fashion to that. And so that's another reason we're doing the book, is to help these foundations and to bring them to light.
Not all of them get the attention that either mine or yours does. And we want people to know there are different foundations out there that are doing something to help those in the CF community, and we're really proud of them.
Laura: Absolutely. What are your hopes moving forward for the future? Your future, the CF community's future?
Andy: You.know, a cure. Absolutely first. I would say, first of all, I would like to have a hundred percent of people have a modulator. That would be my number one goal is first to get to that status where, yes, you still have cystic fibrosis, but you can take down the anxiety a little bit about the disease.
But obviously number two, and it's the big one, is the cure. I really hope, whatever it is that we find a cure for cystic fibrosis. I know there are so many people in so many different countries working on , and I hope in the next few years we have something, I want the newest generation of people with cf to one day say, yeah I used to have cystic fibrosis.
I don't have it anymore, but, that's the dream of mine. Me personally, that's my hope. And obviously me personally, I look at my family and my wife and kids, and I just, I know that CF is a big deal because I talk about it a lot and I put it out there a lot, but I just want them to live the lives that they want, be happy, and just.
It's been hard ever since Covid, Covid was so hard because people like me, with the condition with CF, I couldn't go out for a long time. And when I did, I had to mask up and double mask in cases, and it's gotten a little bit easier, but it's still, it's always out there. And that's always, it's tough when you have a lung disease.
But I just want everybody to be able to live a normal life and be happy. I like to say, make America kind again. I want us to just be happy, I just want this world to love each other and to work well together. And Cystic Fibrosis is proof of that. People from all these different countries are helping each other out.
Why can't the world itself be that way? That's my hope is just that we can, the next generation of people with CF can have a promising and a happy future. Not just promising, but happy. Just work well together.
Laura: And that's a beautiful way to end this podcast. Unless there was anything else you wanted to add about your book, I think your words are a beautiful way to end it.
And people can get your book on Amazon and other book sellers, correct?
Andy: Yeah, it'll be on Barnes and Noble, it'll be on Amazon. You can look on our website. It'll have ways to get there. That's TheCFWarriorProject.com And you'll see a lot about it. You'll also, if you go onto that site, you'll see all the warriors that are in this book.
There's a link that you can click on. It'll kinda say, a quote from them or you know their name, their age. And the youngest person with CF on there actually is six years old. He wrote his own book. With his mom, and he is six years old. Because he and his mom looked for books about CF that they could explain to his friends, six, seven years old.
They couldn't find anything. And so he said to his mom, why don't we write our own? And they wrote their own little book. These are the kind of things that I love to hear. This book goes from six to a doctor who's now in his seventies who has CF and wasn't supposed to live long.
Laura: Is that Dr. Quinton?
Andy: No, but I did have him in the first book. I won't tell everybody, but I'll just say that this doctor works at Duke University, so you'll see who it is. But yeah he's a doctor at Duke. But I did write about Dr. Quinton from UC San Diego in the first book. Wonderful. He's amazing too. All these guys are just incredible, really incredible stories, but yeah.
Yes, you'll see about that. I'm just amazed. I'd never thought someone with cystic fibrosis could live in their seventies and you got, in the first book we talked about Jerry Cahill, if you know who Jerry is.
Laura: Yeah, I think everyone does.
Andy: He's done a ton of work and Jerry's become a really good friend of mine. I'm really proud of all he's done and I love how he always says, be your own superhero. And I think that's great advice for the kids. Look up to yourself a little bit cuz you've been through a lot and you're doing a lot. You're gonna inspire a lot of people that makes you a superhero.
Laura: I agree. Wonderful words. Thank you, Andy Lipman, and thanks for the tease. Everybody's gonna have to look for that. Duke University.
Andy: Yeah, that's what I do. I like to tease it around a little bit. Like, where's that doctor?
Laura: Absolutely. We're gonna. Look for that doctor first when we get the book maybe, but so many other people are in it that obviously we didn't mention, I can't wait to read it. So thanks for all you do in the CF community and for getting this book out there so more people can learn about it.
Andy: Ah, thank you Laura. Thanks for this podcast and thanks for what you and your foundation do, and I'm excited that your story's in there and it tells a lot of great things, how you got started and it's, I won't give that away either, but it's a great story. I notice a lot of people are watching this probably already know it, but it's just, it's amazing how you got involved and how like you were just like, I'm ready to go. Let's do this. It's like you and your husband, so it's such a cool thing how you guys got started and never stopped. We need more people like you just to keep it going. And luckily we have a lot of people in this book that are doing the same thing, so.
Laura: It is, it's wonderful. And thank you.
Andy: Thanks for having me.