This week on Chronically Candid, Morgan sits down with Caleigh Haber, CF patient advocate and consultant, speaker, and founder of Fight2Breathe, a rare disease advocacy platform reaching over 100,000 people in 30 countries. Caleigh was born with cystic fibrosis, lives with CF-related diabetes, and has been through two double lung transplants. Morgan has followed her story online for years, and this conversation is their first time meeting face to face.
Caleigh opens with her CF story, from an active childhood full of gymnastics and cheerleading to a steep decline in her late teens and a double lung transplant at 20. She shares what happened eight months later on a celebration trip to Hawaii: DIOS, aspiration, heart and lung failure, and a medically induced coma on ECMO. She had to relearn how to walk, talk, and swallow, and she needed a second transplant in 2018.
Morgan and Caleigh dig into the modulator era, where two people with the same disease can have vastly different experiences. Morgan shares that she and her two siblings all have CF, and Caleigh reflects on the decision of whether to start modulators at all, while already so sick, waiting for her first double-lung transplant. They talk about imposter syndrome and survivor’s guilt, and Morgan mentions comedian Kirsten Michelle Cills (see the Sept 15 episode), who touched on the same tension. They also remember Tiffany Rich, a fellow CF advocate and friend of Caleigh's who passed in May 2025.
Caleigh gets vulnerable about how trauma still shows up, like the way a crackling fire can pull her back to being unable to move in her hospital bed, and how her family taught her to ground herself in the present. Now living in Barcelona after more than three years of van life across North America, she explains how she and her husband meticulously planned around her care to prepare for any health scenario, including a sepsis scare in Alaska, and the pride she feels about having built a consulting career on the skills she's developed through her lived experience.
The episode closes with Morgan's three questions that she asks every guest, including what Caleigh wants people to understand about living with an often-invisible chronic illness: cancelling or going quiet is never a reflection of how she feels about you.
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Follow Caleigh on Instagram at @fight2breathe. You can support Morgan’s work by reading and subscribing to Chronically Candid on Substack at morgannbarrett.substack.com and following her on Instagram at @morganbarrett__.
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