A 47-year-old man with cystic fibrosis hopes that stories like his will be reassuring to younger people diagnosed with the illness.
Advances in the standards of care, as well as the availability of new medication, have transformed the survival and health rates of people with cystic fibrosis.
According to the latest data from the Cystic Fibrosis Registry of Ireland, the population of people with cystic fibrosis has been steadily changing.
Cork native Val Weblin was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as a child. He celebrated his 47th birthday last week.
"I started going into hospital when I was four years of age, and I'd be on IV antibiotics for two weeks at a time, and that could happen four or five times a year," Mr Weblin said.
At the time, the risk of cross-infection among people with cystic fibrosis was not widely known. He made friends with the other children who had cystic fibrosis on the ward.
Many of his best friends from the ward did not make it into adulthood.
His little sister, Angie, who also had cystic fibrosis, died when she was 16 in 1998.
"It was a tough disease to live with," Mr Weblin said.
"The prognosis wasn't great for living long."
In the year 2000, Mr Weblin had a double lung transplant. Later, when the Cystic Fibrosis Centre was established in Cork, Mr Weblin said it "changed my life".
"I've had different issues along the way, but I'm still here.
"The team works with me when problems come up, I've had a few over the years!"
When he was a small child, he was told he might make it to 11 or 12 years old. When he was 11, he was told he might make it to 13 or 14 years old.
Mr Weblin has continued to defy the odds. His lung capacity is at around 40% now and he has a nine-year-old son.
Professor Barry Plant, a consultant in respiratory illness and the director of the adult Cystic Fibrosis Centre at Cork University Hospital, has been treating Mr Weblin for the past 18 years.
"If you were born in the 1970s with cystic fibrosis, your parents would have been told that you had a 50% chance of making it to your mid-teens," Prof Plant said.
"However, if you're born now in 2025 with cystic fibrosis, your parents will be told you've a 50% chance of making it beyond 55 years of age.
"That's with the current therapies," he added.
Prof Plant said that it is important that Ireland will build on its success.
"The story [of cystic fibrosis], really is an Irish success story," Prof Plant said.
The HSE has made cystic fibrosis a priority illness. In 1970, there was just one healthcare centre for cystic fibrosis in the country. Today there are 12.
Now, there are 220 adults with cystic fibrosis being treated at Prof Plant's centre - 15% of adults with cystic fibrosis are over the age of 40.
With an ageing population, however, comes new challenges.
These include cystic fibrosis related diabetes, bone disease and renal complications.
Others, however, are more positive. Last year, 20 women in Ireland with cystic fibrosis had children.
