Tiffany Christensen May 2009
Tiffany Christensen, age 35, draws from her personal experience with cystic fibrosis (CF) to help other people and their caregivers who live with chronic diseases. She is the first to admit that her journey with CF has been incredibly arduous, but through ambition, determination and drawing on inner strength, Tiffany has been able to achieve her goals.
Tiffany hit her first major life challenge when she was a college student at the North Carolina Schools of the Arts. A drama major, Tiffany was passionate about acting and had dreams of being on stage or in movies. Unfortunately, due to her deteriorating health and subsequent double lung transplant, Tiffany had to drop out of school. While it was a devastating experience to leave a school that she loved and recalibrate her participation in acting as a profession, Tiffany made her health her number one priority.
"CF sometimes forces you to shift focus. You can either be flexible or resistant to change," according to Tiffany. "You've got to find new things to inspire you and to love, when your physical limits make it difficult to do the things that you once did. That's what has kept me going."
Tiffany muses that her life has come full circle in the sense that she now uses her acting tools to be an effective public and motivational speaker. For the past four years, Tiffany has become a huge pillar of support in the CF and chronic disease community. She calls her profession "Illness and Transition Coaching" and through her support, advice and empathy, Tiffany brings comfort, strength and compassion to many people. She has a special talent for putting people at ease and helping them to understand important information.
In addition to personal coaching with patients and families, Tiffany works with a number of organizations to further healthcare rights and increase support for people with a chronic illness. She works with Project Compassion, which is a nonprofit support foundation for people with illness and their caregivers, as the Patient Advocacy Coordinator and lends her voice to Duke Health System’s Patient Advocacy Council as a member and Chair Elect. Tiffany also volunteers with Carolina Donor Services, the North Carolina Transplant Foundation, University of North Carolina Bereavement Committee, Sweet Melissa Fund and other patient focused conferences.
Through her work, she hopes to create a more patient-centered style of care. Supported in part through grants, Tiffany travels to speak with families about the healthcare culture, sharing stories of her own experience; she also speaks with medical students, divinity schools and nursing schools to help put a face on the patient experience. Tiffany is publishing several manuals to help these groups understand how they can improve their bedside manner and a patient's healthcare experience, giving them what she calls the patient's "beds-eye-view."
Besides coaching and public speaking, Tiffany stays busy as a productive and talented writer. Her work can be found on her blog, "sick girl speaks!," and within her autobiography, Sick Girl Speaks. In her other spare time, she enjoys taking improvisation and acting classes.
"Through my life, the times that I felt most motivated and positive were times when I had outside goals in my life that I was working toward," said Tiffany. "Those goals inspired me to be compliant and were the things that pushed me to work harder at my role as a CF patient."
To maintain her own health and stay strong enough to continue working and writing, Tiffany is consistent with her medication use, checking her blood sugar (she has CF-related diabetes) and taking insulin. She is diligent in keeping in touch with her transplant coordinator and physicians if any changes occur in her health. She is also aware of her body's limits and knows when she needs to take a break. Balance is her personal mantra, in taking care of oneself as well as taking care of others. She avoids boredom with exercise by constantly keeping her workout routine fresh and fun, and making it seem as unlike exercise as possible.
Tiffany's life has changed course from the dreams of her teenager years, but it has become richer and she has become more self-aware and confident because of the changes and readjustments. Her work is honored within the healthcare community, having been invited to speak at the prestigious John's Hopkins Hospital Grand Rounds, being awarded Healthcare Blog of the Year by HealthCentral.com and Wellsphere's Best Healthcare Blogger.
"Tiffany was given intelligence, compassion, a talent for self-expression, self-reliance and creativity along with her cystic fibrosis disease,” said Heroes of Hope™ Living with CF co-chair Isa Stenzel Byrnes. “She has harnessed a remarkable inner power to cultivate a career helping CF patients and health care providers better understand the illness experience. That is a true heroine. Tiffany remains one of the finest role models the CF community has to offer."
Please note: The information contained on these Heroes of Hope™ Living with CF award recipient biographies are not regularly updated. The information only represents the point in time when the Heroes of Hope recipient was honored.
