Facing Half a Life Span, Student Is Fully Involved

Kristin Price returned to the red-bricked USC campus last week, having just completed her bachelor’s degree and in need of a fresh set of transcripts for the Montreal university where she will start graduate school in the fall.

Four years ago she was senior class president at Thousand Oaks High School, where she put together an academic career piled high with honors and achievements. Today she is planning to pursue her doctoral degree, hoping to land a job as a college professor.

Not bad for someone who once was told she might not live past grammar school.

The 21-year-old academic standout was born with cystic fibrosis, a terminal genetic disease that kills many patients just as they are arriving at adulthood. Although advances in treatment have boosted the mean survival age to 31, the disease remains the No. 1 genetic killer of children and young adults in the United States.

Price knows the reality as well as anyone, that the clock that ticks down the minutes in everyone’s life spins at double time for her. But she figures that if she has to race the clock, she might as well give it a run for its money.

“It has made me prioritize, to set goals and push myself to achieve them,” said Price, walking in the shadow of the Tommy Trojan statue on the USC campus, where the past four years have been dominated by school exams and activities rather than doctor visits and hospital stays.

“In a lot of ways I see my disease as a vehicle for pushing me to do what I was meant to do,” she said. “You’ve got to live. You can’t live your life like you’re going to die.”

Ask anyone who knows her and they will tell you that Price has done exactly that.

Diving in where she left off at Thousand Oaks High, Price was a member of USC’s student senate and a campus Christian organization.

She was a regular contributor to USC’s literary magazine and volunteered two summers as a counselor for Troy Camp, a weeklong wilderness camp for disadvantaged youngsters organized and run by university students.

She graduated in May with a degree in communications and received the Order of Troy award for her contributions to student life at the university.

She also was among a handful of students in her class chosen to participate in the university’s prestigious Leadership Institute, a course taught by USC President Steven Sample and veteran business professor Warren Bennis.

“This was a class of highly charged, very high-achieving people, and she was really outstanding in that group--I mean memorable,” Bennis recalled.

Bennis was a mentor to Price during her years at USC but only found out about her illness last year when he was dispensing long-range career advice. He told her to take her time considering her career options. She told him slow and steady was not a pace she could afford.

“She has almost a sense of passion for the promise of life; that’s why I was so blown away when I learned about this disease,” Bennis said. “But this is a woman who, even in her reduced life span, is going to make a difference. She already has made a difference.”

Price said she has struggled the past four years to figure out who to tell about her illness and how much to say.

The disease is fatal and severe, causing the body to produce an abnormally thick mucus that clogs the lungs and obstructs the pancreas, affecting everything from breathing to digestion. Price devotes at least a couple of hours a day to keeping the disease in check, from respiratory therapies to administering a dizzying array of medications.

But other than a nagging cough, there are few outward signs that she is sick. At least until she gets really sick.

That happened during her third year of high school and again as a junior at USC. Both times, Price landed in the hospital as her body gave out under the weight of the illness, exacerbated by a full course load and extracurricular activities.

At the start of her senior year in college, a routine test revealed that her lungs were working at 30% of capacity. It was then, as she was laying plans for graduate school, that she met with her doctors at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles to talk seriously about her future.

“When you get a number like that, it’s a red flag,” Price explained, noting that prolonged stretches of such limited lung capacity usually stir talk of lung transplants and other measures.

“Here I felt full of life, I was ready to have the gates open and have it be the start of everything, and all of a sudden something pops up and says, ‘No, you’re about ready to end,’ ” she said. “It was just a reminder that my life is not normal, and it’s not going to take a normal path.”

It turned out the test result was a fluke. Weeks later she was back up at 40% to 50% of capacity, her usual level.

“Kristin is a very special girl in that she exemplifies what we all strive to have happen with people with chronic medical problems: to be able to incorporate the illness into daily life and yet have a life,” said Dr. Eithne MacLaughlin, a pediatric pulmonologist at Childrens Hospital who has treated Price since childhood.

Earlier this month, Price said her goodbye to MacLaughlin and other hospital staff who have been like a second family to her. And in less than a month, she will say goodbye to her parents, who remain in Thousand Oaks.

“I think we all try to keep focusing on the future and we are optimistic about the progress they are making with this disease,” said Jeff Price, an associate pastor at Gold Coast Christian Church in Camarillo. “We try to be realistic, but at this point I think she sees herself accomplishing the same things everyone else her age is accomplishing.”

Indeed, Price heads off to Concordia University in Montreal a young woman, ready to take on the world. She even got a tattoo last year--a strand of ivy curling down her ankle--as a stab at independence and a display of optimism about her future.