The Ponoka Kinsmen club made a generous donation to Cystic Fibrosis Canada on Saturday, April 14th at their 7th annual live auction.

They hosted a number of guest speakers, including Kelly Tibbits and her 8-year-old daughter Rowan, who has suffered from CF her entire life.

Kelly says they keep the details about the seriousness of the disease from their daughter, with Rowan talking to the crowd of community members and Kinsmen supporters about her everyday life.

“Rowan talked about her life with cystic fibrosis in a very 8-year-old kind of way. She just talked about needles and hospitals and taking a lot of medication and just how she feels physically on a day to day basis.”

She says it's the only life Rowan has ever known.

“She can’t quite wrap her brain around that fact that it’s quite unusual for an 8-year-old child to have taken 38,000 pills since she was born, or endured 50,000 hours of treatments.”

The Kinsmen presented the Tibbits with a cheque for $4,000 which will go to help Cystic Fibrosis Canada find a cure for the most common fatal genetic disease that affects Canadian children and young adults.

Kelly is also the President of the Central Alberta chapter of CF Canada, that helped create a national event known as the Princess Ball, which has taken place in Red Deer since 2012, helping to raise over $1.2 million nationwide. 

CF mainly affects the lungs and digestive system, but its effects and their severity can vary from person to person. This continued destruction of the lungs will eventually lead to death in the majority of people suffering from CF.

 

(Members of the Ponoka Kinsmen present the Tibbits family with a cheque for $4,000 for Cystic Fibrosis Canada. Photo courtesy of the Ponoka Kinsmen Facebook page.)