A while ago, my friend Mike* and I created a Website for Blue Caboose Children's Fund, a non-profit that helps children and families dealing with the hardships of Cystic Fibrosis treatment. The reason we got hooked up to this organization is because the founder and inspiration are good friends of my family's. More specifically, my cousin Noah's friend Jack has CF and his mother started BC4CF.
Anyway, Noah wrote a sweet article about his friendship with Jack and some of the stuff Jack and his mom are currently doing. I just wanted to share it.
Catching Breath
by Noah Johnson
I’ve always thought Jack and my friendship wasn’t an ordinary one. We are both normal suburban teens. We are so carefree and lazy that if the world depended on us for its survival, we all wouldn’t be here for long! So I’d say were some fairly average teenagers.
However, there’s one big thing that separates us from the rest, Jack has Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a chronic lung disease that causes sticky mucus to build up in the lungs. It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand that this disease can cause countless problems within the body; like extreme difficulty breathing, which you know is pretty important. It’s life threatening for the person with CF and life altering on his family and close friends.
Jack and many other CFers (the slang term for a CF patient) spend so much time in the hospital, it becomes a second home. Like any sane human being, my friend doesn’t want to be there for any length of time, yet he finds himself living in a hospital room for weeks at a time. Coincidentally, he knows how to make a long hospital stay and CF treatments better. That’s why in winter of 2009, he debuted his foundation Jack in the Toy Box, the joy-filled premise being to deliver toys to CF kids both in and out of the hospital around Christmas time. It has been going strong for years and gets bigger every holiday season due to the community’s selfless donations.
Jack’s awesome mother, Kelly Colbert, later founded Blue Caboose 4 CF, a full-scale, non-profit organization dedicated to help not only CF patients, but the other people Cystic Fibrosis attacks, the families of the patients. The main thing about CF is that there are way more side effects than what a doctor can tell you.
Blue Caboose does its best to quell the endless pain and stress of medical bills, highway tolls and gas money to get to the hospital every night; the mystery of how students get basic school supplies; and the challenge of affording presents for the kids this Christmas. It also helps in ways that can’t be solved with dollars, the giving of comfort totes to families and parent support groups.
What separates this insanely cool charity from the rest is that it’s truly homegrown and focuses on quality over quantity. Every single dime goes into helping the families of CF. Kelly Colbert has Texas-sized plans to change what it means to have a loved one with this daunting disease. With donations and contributions, kids like Jack can see their families live more normal lives, and everyone can catch their breath.
*Mike also did my Website. He's gifted beyond measure.
