Faulty gene that lurks in 2m people
even be tested for before she comes a mum herself.”
She joked: “I’m ready to be a granny any time.”
Sheena, who has been in a blues band for most of her adult life, said: “I’ve sung all my life and I think it’s obviously been very good for my lungs.
“Not only has it helped strengthen them but being in a band meant I had to always do my chest exercises before going out as I couldn’t be in a position where I would start to cough mid-song.”
A greater understanding of cystic f ibrosis and advanced treatments Cystic fibrosis is an inherited lifeshortening genetic condition.
Only half the people who have it will live to celebrate their 40th birthday.
Two million people in the UK carry the faulty gene without realising it.
If two carriers have children, there’s a one-in-four chance their child will have the condition, which slowly destroys the lungs and digestive system.
Visit www.cysticfibrosis.org.uk for more information. of her veins to collapse. Although she still sings at home, she has been forced to give up professional singing for now.
She said: “I still sing the blues but not in the band any more.
“I was starting to struggle to have the breath to do more than one or two songs at a time.
“I started to get real ly painful headaches too, caused by the pressure building up in my head.”
Sheena must now travel more regularly from her island home to hospital in Glasgow to receive specialist physiotherapy to help clear her lungs. She said: “I don’t know what the future holds for me – my life is good, it is just my lungs that aren’t.
“They haven’t got the genetic cure for CF yet and certainly it would be good if there was a cure that could mend some of the damage caused in your lungs.
“But in the meantime you just have to keep active, keep your physio going and keep going.”
Sheena is one of several people living with the condition who appear on a new BBC Alba documentary, Breathless: Living with Cystic Fibrosis, which is available on BBC iPlayer until October 25.
She features alongside Lisa Hertwig, 25, of Alloa, whose lungs have become so weakened by the condition that she is now waiting for a double lung transplant.