One Black Man’s experience in Battling Cystic Fibrosis
Sickboy
CBC
4.8 • 524 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do you do when a life-saving medical breakthrough saves almost everyone in your chronic illness community—except you? If you’re new to the show, Cystic Fibrosis is traditionally known as a genetic disease that heavily impacts the lungs. But this week, the fellas sit down with Nicholas Kelly, a registered dietitian who playfully calls himself a "unicorn" because he’s a Black man living with a condition stereotypically labeled as a pasty white person's illness. (Oh, and Taylor passed out right before we hit record, so he’s currently sleeping off-set while Brian stands by with his historically rib-shattering CPR skills) . Nick opens up about his mother bucking the 1980s medical establishment to diagnose him at three months old , outliving a massive string of childhood expiration dates , and surviving an actual "code blue" post-surgery nightmare. He also drops a beautifully perspective-shifting bomb on the room about what it truly feels like to watch his closest friends get saved by the miracle drug Trikafta while his own rare genetic mutations leave him completely ineligible for the club. From highly inappropriate anatomy questions to a profound psychological transition from chasing the clock to building a legacy , this episode is an incredible look at what it means to live life with absolute passion.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Imagine you've been charged with a crime, and the only witness pointing the finger at you isn't even human. |
| 0:07.0 | I remember thinking, are you serious? |
| 0:10.4 | What is this thing? |
| 0:11.9 | It's something artificial, created by a mysterious Canadian. |
| 0:16.3 | And it's coming for all of us. |
| 0:18.6 | A life-defining technology. |
| 0:22.0 | Crime as we know it will never be the same. |
| 0:24.7 | I'm like, oh my God, he's lying. |
| 0:26.4 | From CBC's Uncover, The Expert Witness. |
| 0:29.4 | Available now on CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:35.2 | This is a CBC podcast. |
| 0:37.5 | Music This is a CBC podcast. |
| 0:45.6 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:56.3 | Welcome back to another week of Sick Boy, and today we are sitting down with a guest who is a literal unicorn in the medical world, |
| 0:59.2 | or at least they would like us to think that. |
| 1:02.5 | Nicholas Kelly lives with cystic fibrosis, like me. |
| 1:07.9 | But unlike me, he is not a pasty-ass white man. |
| 1:14.6 | The white folks that you would usually see in the medical books, no, Nick is a black man navigating a disease that was, and in many ways still is stereotyped as a white |
| 1:20.7 | person's condition. And we dive into the fact that Nick is a minority inside a minority, |
| 1:30.0 | the experience of having mutation that is so rare that they don't have a miracle drug for him yet. |
| 1:35.7 | The terrifying moment, he actually died on the operating table and what it feels like |
| 1:40.8 | to watch the life leave your own body. |
... |
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