A Passion for Living

The inspiring and life-enhancing memoir of a nineteen-year-old cystic fibrosis sufferer.

Our lives are precious. Never more so than for 19-year-old Alexander Stobbs who has been a cystic fibrosis sufferer from birth. For him, each day could be his last. But as he says you can t do stuff if you re afraid .A truly inspiring story of a young musician determined to live his dreams, Alex takes us on his journey to survive a daily round of drugs and treatments as he also prepares for his next ambition: to conduct Bach s three-hour-long St Matthew Passion. Everything we take for granted is a struggle for Alex eating, sleeping, even breathing. His determination to live life to the full, constantly striving for perfection in his musical performance, is set against the exhausting every day rigours of medication and treatment simply to keep him alive. Yet he has already achieved some extraordinary goals. An Eton scholar, he won a further music scholarship to King s College, Cambridge. Introduced here by his mother Suzanne, Alex s account of living with no certainty about his future is a spur to all of us to make every day count.