BHHS Grad Won't Let Illness Keep Her from Stanford

When Beverly Hills resident Mallory Smith first received her acceptance letter to Stanford University, she could not contain her excitement about the opportunities awaiting her.

"When I was accepted, I was kind of more in shock than anything else," Smith said. "Once I got in, I was like, 'Whoa, Stanford!' "

Smith, 17, graduated from Beverly Hills High School in June 2010. Though she suffers from cystic fibrosis, the immense progress made in research over the course of the last decade has allowed Smith and other teens with the disease to enjoy opportunities once unavailable to people living with cystic fibrosis.

The illness causes the body to produce thick, sticky mucus that hinders the lungs and digestive system. According to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a nonprofit, donor-supported organization, the disease affects about 30,000 children and adults in the United States and 70,000 worldwide. About 1,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.

Despite her chronic illness, Smith has been involved in athletics throughout her school career. After attending El Rodeo Middle School, she become an active athlete at BHHS, participating in the school's volleyball, water polo and swimming teams. Because of her dedication to sports, she had to find extra time to maintain an impressive GPA and keep up with her medical treatments.

"I had to manage my time really well," Smith said. "I had to coordinate my school schedule, take fewer classes, and know what I could manage and what would be too much for me. Beverly High was a good place to do that because the schedule of the school allowed me to go to class for four hours a day and then do sports. Sports are the important part in keeping me healthy, so it's good that there was a lot of emphasis on sports."

Smith also had to budget time to pay frequent visits to her doctors. Throughout middle school and high school, she moved from doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to doctors in Long Beach and at Stanford and UCLA.

In addition to support from her school, Smith also had an easier high school experience because of help from her best friends.

"All of my friends that I was close with were so used to [my disease] that they didn't treat me like I was different at all because they've grown up with me and I've grown up with it," Smith said. "Anytime I would get sick they were so amazing and they would come to the hospital almost every day. I would have so many visitors that the nurses would be in shock."

In recent years, new treatments and developments in cystic fibrosis research have led to a steady increase in life expectancy for patients like Smith. Today, the median predicted age of survival for such patients is 37.4 years. Research has come a long way since 1950, when the median age was 1 year. Even as recent as 2000, the median age of life expectancy was 32 years.

"A lot of money is being spent on clinical trials, and research and [researchers] recognize that they can change life expectancy," said Smith's mother, Diane Smith. "Now, [cystic fibrosis patients] can live longer, and they have less hospitalization and less problems." 

As recently as the 1980s, few teens with the disease lived to attend college. Today, many like Smith are going off to universities and far beyond in their lives. Smith plans to study something in the humanities at Stanford.

"I know that if I was born in 1920, I probably would have been dead when I was 5," she said. "In some ways, I don't feel as fortunate, because I feel like I'm a normal person and like I should have more opportunities. But when I remember that if I was born sometime in the past I wouldn't have any opportunities, I feel fortunate."

Smith, who takes 18 medications daily, appreciates the hard work and dedication that cystic fibrosis researchers put into finding new treatments. 

"As you get older with CF, your lung function declines, so every time they come up with a new treatment it slows down that progression," she said. "The fact that they keep coming up with new antibiotics specifically helps me a lot so that I don't decline in my health. It improves the quality of life in that way."

In conjunction with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Mallory contributes to the research effort by holding her own annual fundraiser called Mallory's Garden. Typically, her fundraiser results in about $120,000 in donations.

"The more awareness and the more education there is around the disease, the more money we can raise, which leads to better research and better treatment," Diane Smith said.