Amber was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, and doctors at Pittsburgh Children’s Hospital in Pennsylvania recommended a life-saving double lung transplant.  Due to further complications, on July 2, 2007 doctors performed a life-saving kidney transplant. 

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-threatening genetic disease affecting approximately 30,000 people in the United States.  For people with the disease, a defective gene causes the body to produce a faulty protein that leads to abnormally thick, sticky mucus that clogs the lungs and can result in fatal lung infections. The mucus also obstructs the pancreas, causing difficulty for a person to absorb nutrients in food and can block the bile duct in the liver, eventually causing permanent damage in approximately six percent of people with CF. (from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation )