New therapies and treatments are making a big difference in the lives of cystic fibrosis patients. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, children are now enjoying active lifestyles that continue into adulthood.

"She's been taking medications since she was three days old, so it's normal for her," says Janie Burdick, speaking of her daughter, Brooke, who has cystic fibrosis, "but I see down the road where she's going to notice 'okay, not everybody does this.'"

The Burdick family looks forward to a day when a cure for cystic fibrosis is found.  Until then a positive attitude is making all the difference in the health of five year old Brooke.

Thanks to a very strict routine of medication and therapies, Brooke is thriving.

"Her body doesn't make A,D,E,K so she has to take special vitamin supplements," Janie says.  "She has eleven medications she is on daily and it's just a set routine that we do.  We do her physical therapy anywhere between one to four times a day.  She has to do a nebulizer treatment, so that's another half hour a day she has to sit still."

It's a lot to take on, but doctor John Schuen says it can make all the difference in quality of life.

"We've been blessed with tremendous advancements in the care of young people with cystic fibrosis," says Dr. Schuen, "it used to be the diagnoses of cf was a dismal one. those kids wouldn't live beyond childhood or adolecense, now we know that's not the truth. this year 2008 we truly think this generation growing up is going to live a very different life."

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease affecting the lungs and digestive system that is passed unknowingly from the parents onto the child.  "Carriers tend not to have symptoms at all," Dr. Shuen says, "it silently weaves its way into the DNA through the generations."

Most children are diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when they are infants, but about ten percent of cases are not found until after the age of ten.  So it's important that parents are made aware of the symptoms.  "The typical or classic symtoms are failure to thrive," Dr Shuen explains, "the child that has a voracious appetite but can't seem to gain weight.  They also tend to have recurrent cough.  A child may have been diagnosed with asthma but may in fact have CF.  Recurrent pneumonia and freuqent sinus infections are also a symptom of the disease."

A disease that Dr. Schuen and the Burdick family hope will someday no longer exist.

"It's just a blessing to see how things have changed over the past fifteen years," Dr. Schuen says, "nowadays our young people with cystic fibrosis are really doing things that were unimaginable a generation past."

"I am very positive," Janie says, "there are a lot of clinical trials going on and they know now how to cure it.  It's just a matter of getting the body to accept that cure and I think she's going to have a very happy long life."

Michigan started a newborn screening program on October 1st of last year, so now all babies are screened for cystic fibrosis.