Mandie needs, deserves your vote

The following column is a shameless, blatant, anything-but-objective solicitation for votes.

I just thought you should know.

The votes aren't for me; they're for Mandie. You and I are going to help pay for her education, but more on that later.

Look, every now and then we journalists do a story about someone who wins our heart. Like Burgon Jensen, the blind and deaf girl I wrote about on Monday. Like Chad Lewis, the big, gentle former NFL tight end.

Like Mandie Rudd.

Mandie was born was cystic fibrosis, although you wouldn't know it to look at her or talk to her. She's blonde, green-eyed, smiling and energetic. But beneath the pleasant exterior there's trouble. CF causes the body to produce a thick mucus that, among other things, clogs the lungs and leads to potentially lethal lung infections. Breathing can be arduous.

Mandie takes pills to enable her to digest food. She adds salt to everything she ingests, even Gatorade. At least once a day she straps on a special vest that uses pulsating air to pound her back and ribs to knock loose the mucus that collects in her lungs, which she then spits out. She can spit like a farmer.

When Mandie was born, the average life expectancy for CF patients was 18; she's 19. She hasn't exactly sat around waiting for trouble.

At Hillcrest High, she was an A student, a member of the National Honor Society and a three-sport athlete. She once competed in a track meet while wearing a PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line — a tube inserted into her arm to deliver medicine. She still competes in basketball and soccer in city and intramural leagues. She rises every morning at 6 for 90 minutes of exercise, which helps keep her lungs clearer.

"CF is part of my life, but it runs alongside me and does not stand in my way," she likes to say.

CF patients usually are hospitalized several times a year for what Mandie terms "a cleanout" — the lungs are cleared of the mucus that gradually collects there. By taking care of herself and exercising regularly, Mandie has been hospitalized only three times, including a 10-day stay last month. Every three months she takes a special medication to kill nasty bacteria that tend to infect the lungs of CF patients.

Meanwhile, Mandie lives her life. She works as a nanny and attends classes at Salt Lake Community College. She plans to become a dental hygienist, if she can afford it. This is where things get tricky.

Go figure. Only 30,000 people in the U.S. have CF — and yet two of the Rudds' three children have it (but not the parents, Dave and Aimee). What are the odds?

"My parents should never gamble, because the odds are stacked against them," says Mandie.