Not a Carrier!

If you have missed all the drama on my blog about me being a CF (Cystic Fibrosis) carrier then you get to catch the happy ending of what could have been a very different story. Here is the boy version (short): I have a cousin with CF. My sister is a positive CF carrier meaning I was 50% likely to be a carrier as well. I had the genetic testing done and turns out I landed on the unlucky side of 50%. I was a carrier. Spencer went back and was tested. He is not a carrier! Hurray! We are elated and very happy that although our children also have a 50% chance of being carriers of the CF gene, none of them will ever have CF. If that wasn’t enough detail keep reading for the girl version with lots of details and an emphasis on feelings, experiences and future plans.

The girl version: Hurray and Hallelujah! We feel blessed that we are not both carriers of CF. It is a huge weight off of our shoulders and we are blessed. As we share our story with our friends and families members I am so shocked to hear people say they are against genetic testing. Really People? Really? Against genetic testing? The thought to be against genetic testing never once crossed my mind. I found out that my sister was a CF carrier about five years before I got married. She was a carrier so I might be too. At the time it didn’t really affect my life. But I was worried for my sister and her husband. He had had 3 siblings die of CF so they were pretty sure he was a carrier. Triple Hallelujah that he wasn’t! At that time I really didn’t think of CF as influencing my life. It was something my married sister had to deal with. I wasn’t having sex (NOTE: I’m a practicing Mormon and didn’t have sex till my wedding night when I was 28 years old. If you are Mormon you aren’t at all shocked by this. Mormons know plenty of pretty 28 year old virgins. If you aren’t Mormon and just blog stalking me then yes, be shocked.) so there wasn’t any chance under the sun that I’d get pregnant with a baby, let alone a CF baby.

When Spencer and I had been married a few years we started thinking about having children someday. After all, we were in our early 30’s and far behind everyone in my graduating high school class that already had 4 kids by 25. (ANOTHER NOTE: I’m glad that wasn’t my life.) I knew we needed to face the possibility of having a CF baby. I told my doctor I wanted a CF carrier test. I know people have strong opinions about Genetic testing. I’m not saying that every one needs to do it but if you have cases in your family of genetic diseases particularly CF (which is high in Utah) then you should get tested. I knew that if we were going to be parents of a CF baby we would need to prepare our selves mentally and also financially. We would need good insurance. I would need to stay home full-time. We would need to learn a lot about CF and how to provide proper care. Abortion of in utero testing with risk to the baby is absolutely out of the question for us. But I did want to know what our future could be like. So in conclusion I am very grateful not to both be CF carriers. I really don’t know what we would have done had we both been positive. I suppose now I’ll never know. Which is just fine. We feel very blessed.