Laura Rothenberg spent most of her life knowing she was going to die young.
She had cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. When she was born, the life expectancy for people with CF was around 18 years. (It's more than double that now.) Laura liked to say she went through her mid-life crisis when she was a teenager.
I met Laura when she was 19. I gave her a tape recorder. And for two years, she kept an audio diary of her battle with cystic fibrosis and her attempts to live a normal life - with lungs that often betrayed her.
The Almost Astronaut (Revisited)
The End of Smallpox
Meet Miss Subways
The Gospel Ranger
Mandela's Election: 30 Years Later
Working, Then and Now
My Iron Lung (Revisited)
My So-Called Lungs (Revisited)
The Rise and Fall of Black Swan Records
Guest Spotlight: Parakeet Panic
The Drum Also Waltzes
The Unmarked Graveyard: Live at WNYC
The Man on the President's Limo
The Unmarked Graveyard: LaMont Dottin
The Unmarked Graveyard: Hisako Hasegawa
The Unmarked Graveyard: Cesar Irizarry
The Unmarked Graveyard: Dawn Powell
The Unmarked Graveyard: Documenting an Invisible Island
The Unmarked Graveyard: Angel Garcia
The Unmarked Graveyard: Noah Creshevsky
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