Meeting Ed Sheeran, riding the London Eye, and having a birthday party were just three of the things on 22-year-old Channan Petride’s bucket list. The cystic fibrosis patient was also on another list — a transplant list for a new heart and lungs, after being told by doctors she would only have a year to live.

Cystic Fibrosis is genetic disease that fills the lungs and other vital organs with mucus, making it difficult to breathe. According to OrganDonor.gov, 29,532 received organ transplants last year. As of 2012, the percentage of people still living after 5 years of receiving a heart was 76.8 percent, and receiving a lung was 55 percent.

These numbers weren’t enough for Channan.

(Photo: Facebook)

“Nobody could say for sure that the transplant would work, and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything on my bucket list because of risk of infection.” she told Mirror.

Related: 5 Beliefs About Organ Donation That Are Totally Untrue

“If it brought me another twenty years, of course I’d do it, but doctors told me there was a chance I’d die on the operating table or my new organs would fail after just six months.”

Petride’s experience with the disease wasn’t always debilitating.

“I was a normal kid. I loved sport…When I got a bit older, I’d go out with friends, go to festivals – typical teenage things.”

After a breakup with her boyfriend 3 years ago, Petride lost a significant amount of weight we she accounts to stress. From there, chest infection, pneumonia, and even Swine Flu followed.

When she made it out of a lung-related emergency room visit last November, Petride decided she needed to make some changes, one of them being creating a bucket list after being told she would only live for a year.

So far, Petride has checked off experiences like having a spa weekend, a big party, meeting a penguin and enjoying a hot air balloon ride. Still to be completed are visiting Disney Land Paris, the London Aquarium and meeting Ed Sheeran.

One her social page she confessed “It is a slow, painful, suffocating condition…at 22 my lungs are showing signs of giving up.”

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Petride’s bucket list. (Photo: mirror.co.uk)

But with the transplant? Doctors said that there was a chance that she could die on the table, or have other recovery issues that wouldn’t allow her to travel. Some of her family members cut off contact from her when they found out about her decision to go off of the transplant list. She didn’t want to wait for an organ that could fail her after 6 months, or have a recovery time that intervened with her plans.

“I know I’ve taken a massive risk but I want to enjoy the time I have left, rather than stick waiting to get a call that may never come.”



She also expressed the need for people to donate money to research for Cystic Fibrosis. “I sleep 20 hours a day and I can’t manage stairs anymore…My lungs rip so I cough up blood, and I’ve been on morphine since November for chronic chest pain.”

Related: Women With Cystic Fibrosis Are Fearless And Gorgeous. Just Look At These Photos

What started as a nurse noticing salty skin on Petride as a baby (a common side effect of cystic fibrosis), has turned into the 22-year-old spreading awareness, and a lesson about measuring life in experiences.

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