The comparison of Sam and his brother Vince, both living with cystic fibrosis.

Sam, 45-years-old & Vince, 47-years-old, were both born with cystic fibrosis (CF). This is their story… 

By Sam Ira

Living with, and having a brother with CF has been an incredible journey of life.

We can’t believe we are still alive to share our stories.

We have both been brought up as normal as possible. It has taken quite a while to accept and talk about cystic fibrosis. 

As young kids, the easiest way to explain our condition was to say we had asthma.  

I personally recommend accepting and being upfront in explaining you have cystic fibrosis, but everyone is so different. My brother Vince hardly talks about having CF, has pretty much fewer hospital admissions and is working full time as an Auto Election running his own business, and also an Auto Electrical Teacher. 

I can’t even imagine how my parents coped and managed to treat us as normally as possible with the medications and physiotherapy required. 

Unfortunately, knowing your life expectancy is a crazy, overtaking feeling to live with, but it can work in reverse! So, in other words, it inspired us even more to not give up and achieve our goals in life! 

We bought a block of land off the plan unexpectedly and got to the point where I couldn’t even cut the grass, but my amazing dad did, and also my brother which was great for me to just watch! 

My parents always planned for the future for us and worked hard all their lives to support us in any possible way, especially knowing that our life expectancy from when we were born, was very low, I’m thinking under 18 over 40 years ago. I don’t even look at it anymore and Vince doesn’t either; we’re past it! 

Considering our situation living with CF, a lot of people are shocked to see what our plans were and what our achievements have been. Thinking of the future did help set us up financially. We now look back and think, if we didn’t have CF, would we have achieved our goals? Probably not. 

With my brother seeing what I’ve been through, double lungs twice in 2009 & 2013 and pulmonary artery in 2014, I hope he doesn’t have to go through the same thing.   

Unfortunately, I can only help my brother to a certain extent, but no one will ever know the exact situation until they go through it themselves. I’m sure it goes both ways too. I can’t imagine how heartbreaking it would be if my brother needed to go through a double lung transplant. 

Vince has been travelling and working two jobs. I’m a freelance videographer and working my own hours, but my health comes first, which took a long time to learn. 

It was an incredible experience to finally build two townhouses on the block we bought in Point Cook.  I always said for a joke if you pass away first you pay the loan and vice versa. 

I keep thinking to myself, I’m so different living with CF than my brother, it’s hard to explain but I’m so happy to see his achievements and that he doesn’t need a transplant yet.  

I also attend the Australian and World Transplant Games which has been an amazing journey. Playing Ten Pin Bowling, Darts Table Tennis, 5K Walk/Run and have won a few medals. And meeting donors and other recipients is pretty much like winning gold medals. 

Vince is hoping for the future, that one day he’ll meet the love of his life and have a family which would be an amazing achievement, and I also hope for that too! Having a family and seeing them grow up would be life-changing in many ways, especially to keep as healthy as possible to see your family grow up.