Olivia Brochu’s work has been featured by Motherly, Five Minute Lit, The Inquisitive Eater, and more. Her essay about her father's heart attack was a WOW Women on Writing contest finalist. She is a fan of gut-wrenching prose, rollercoasters, and baby feet. You can read more of her work at oliviabrochuwrites.com. 

Winning the Genetic Lottery

My younger and only sibling was born with cystic fibrosis. I am a carrier of one of its most common strains.

For my sister, this means heavy mucus lining her lungs, her stomach, her intestines. It weighs her down. Labors her breathing. Clogs her belly until, at times, no food can get through.

For me, this means the occasional sinus infection. Maybe.

For my sister, this means taking pills at every meal so she can digest fat. This means pouring drugs into a nebulizer and sucking them down every morning and night. This means strapping on what looks like a suicide bomber’s vest and letting it shake her body until hopefully some of that thick mucus knocks loose.

For me, it means pretending this is normal. It means taking turns as a kid wearing that vest and letting it rattle my voice while singing Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” that full body shaking making me sound like Ozzy Osbourne (at least according to my dad).

For my sister, death is a tangible thing. Once, I asked her if she thought about the terminal part of CF, if she could even fathom what that means.

“Maybe I know how I’m going to die, and maybe I’ll walk across the street tomorrow and get hit by a car.”

For me, that concept alone is dizzying.

My heart races. Adrenaline pumps through my veins. An icy chill climbs my spine. My opponent closes in. I see every uncomfortable moment of the months beforehand flash before my eyes. I’d worked too hard to lose now. The finish line stands seconds away.

But there’s no banner to run through, no Gatorade to chug, no muscles to stretch. Instead, it’s my wallet stretching to its very extremes.

Click! There goes my slush fund for the week. Click! There goes my grocery budget. Click! I dip into my savings.

Then I slump into my computer chair, credit cards askew on my desk. I feel tired, and a little dirty, not at all how I thought I’d feel at the end of this long road -not a marathon, but a fundraiser for a charity.

I wonder if I would have let things go so far had I not been fundraising for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, if my connection to CF wasn’t beyond personal, if it wasn’t intrinsic, wasn’t cellular.

Winning the genetic lottery is, in many ways, as great as it sounds. And that’s exactly how CF is doled out - dumb luck.

Two carriers mate. They either pass down their mutated gene, or they don’t. If both do, which happens 25 percent of the time, bam! That baby gets branded with a life-long genetic disorder.

This makes it sound like a game, but the realities are harsher.

They are obviously harsh for my sister, and I hate that for her. I would take the harshness from her - if I could. But I can’t. All I can do is watch her struggle, watch her tame the beast always brewing inside her body,

It’s exhausting, all that watching. I sit and I watch and I stew in my guilt and it grows and grows, because I am fine. I am breathing easily and running effortlessly and living without pain. And the person I love the most is not. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

I make big mistakes with my winnings. I disrespect this body of mine, the one born without any issues. I fight this body by choice. I find issues that aren’t genetically there. And that feels so much worse.

In eighth grade, I round my shoulders and hope to shrink. I am inches taller than every person in my sweaty middle school gym. My shorter friends dance with boys their own size.

In college, I throw up everything this body takes in. I am so lightheaded, sometimes the words of my French homework dance across the page.

In my 30s, I google “breast augmentation” with my phone in one hand, newborn baby latched to my nipple in the other.

Winning doesn’t always feel great.

Working tirelessly to win the CF fundraiser, I ask everyone I know to donate. I am pitted against seven other participants, none as motivated as I am to be named “finest” fundraiser.

I ask every business I work with to make large contributions. Ask my husband’s company to buy a table at the gala. In five months, I raise $17,000.

It isn’t enough.

I don’t win the fundraising competition. I don’t cure my sister’s cystic fibrosis. And I still don’t look in the mirror and not cringe.

I should know by now that winning doesn’t heal all your wounds. Neither does money, even when it’s given to a charity.

But where money fails, this body of mine can, perhaps, succeed. Because this is the body my sister leans against when a fellow CF patient dies. This is the body that pushes itself to its limits to fund life-changing research. This is the body that will carry me through every win and every loss.

It deserves some gratitude for that too.