What Love Looks Like: Caregiving & CF

In the season finale of “It’s a Lung Story”, Dr. Ahmet Uluer, Lauren Harvey, and Andrea Gavin Becker return to the studio for a deeply honest conversation about caregiving in cystic fibrosis—what it demands, what it gives back, and what often goes unseen.

They’re joined by two caregivers: Pam Richards, mother to an adult daughter living with CF, and Shannon Mortimer, a CF spouse. Pam and Shannon share what it means to love and care for someone through years of illness, hospitalizations, and transplant care. They talk about how stepping in and out of the caregiver role shapes identity, family dynamics, and emotional endurance. They speak openly about trust, guilt, burnout, faith, support, and the emotional aftermath that doesn’t automatically resolve when health stabilizes.

Woven into the episode are voice messages from people living with CF, offering gratitude to the caregivers who manage medications, sit through long hospital nights, absorb medical trauma, and quietly hold families together.

Shannon Mortimer: Shannon can be found on Instagram @shannonmariemortimer.

Pam Richards: Pam is not on social media and is enjoying time for self care and joy.