Right, I'm 28. My name's Chris Downs - I'm 28 and I live with my parents at the moment and probably for the foreseeable future, but I started living with them again three years ago, just before I got ill. I have had a period of ill health related to my CF.

That was at six weeks, so I can't remember, I was a baby. I was diagnosed by chance more than anything. The doctor had seen it before and told my mum to get a sweat test on me and I was diagnosed but before that I was having problems digesting what I was given. I was on breast milk which has a high fat content and that was just going straight through my digestive system and that was leaving me as a baby crying all the time, gradually - well slowly dying basically. I was anaemic. I had had I think a pint of blood transfusion so things weren't looking well until they had diagnosed the CF. It was a bit of a shock to my mum finding out, well not a bit of a shock - a lot of a shock and to my mum and my dad.

They coped as best they could but that doesn't mean that they were very comfortable about it, and I remember as a child feeling a bit kind of like I was causing trouble, like a burden in a way because they were always like worrying, you could always pick it up when I was a kid that they were worrying about this, that, or me taking my drugs, my medication and when I didn't take it they'd panic a little and I'd pick that up as well because they got cross and I could tell I wasn't the same as other kids or my sister. I have a sister, who doesn't have CF and who lives in York now, and there's problems with her as well because she thought I was getting too much attention - all this attention that I didn't want. I wouldn't say it was a bad childhood, but there was an atmosphere I think, a little bit of an atmosphere and only when I started to realise what I had to contend with and kind of take responsibility for myself that things have improved, I think. But I think it was a lot for my parents to deal with because originally they were told I would live till I was seven, then it was twelve, then it was twenty five, then it was thirty five and now people are talking about fifty, maybe sixty, so... because the improvements of the drugs have meant that the life expectancy gets longer for most people with CF. And CF has various degrees of severity and I have always been classed as mild to moderate but I think it may have changed since then because in the last two years I've had some quite... a bad run of health. I think during my childhood I could do most things anybody else could do, I wasn't that physically impaired but I think maybe I was a bit too wrapped in cotton wool when I was a kid maybe, well, a lot of people were concerned with me and told me how well I was doing, impressed with how well I was and stuff so I could always feel I wasn't allowed near bonfires or in dusty places, things like that which always felt a bit. I wish I could have done more.

I had a physiotherapist come round every week just to reassure me and show me how to do physio and show mum how to do it as well and make sure we were doing it right every week until I was sixteen I think and that was mostly percussion on the chest which was kind of hand claps on the chest. It looks on videos and stuff like it's abuse but it's actually to loosen up the phlegm on the chest and bring it up more effectively. But now I'm taught ... being taught postural drainage and active cycle breathing which means that no hand claps are needed and it just uses gravity and breathing techniques to break it up naturally without hand clapping. Some people do use hand clapping though.

My mum did, yes my mum was my primary carer I would say. She was the one that did the most worrying I think. But my dad took it badly as well. I think he struggled a little bit with her as well but he was more distant, so my dad and my sister were more on the outskirts of it and my mum was more involved. I think both my dad and my sister felt a little bit left out because my mum was kind of taking over.