Spring 2025

C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 5 139 the ocean and on a surfboard. Melissa not only surfed with volunteers in Santa Cruz but even traveled with all of her medical equipment to Oahu. She soon found her own surf buddies locally, like professional surfer Shawn “Barney” Barron, who would take her out regularly, push- ing her into waves and making sure she didn’t get hurt. Melissa’s parents were thrilled by the changes they saw in their daughter. “She was able to clear her lungs,” Chris recalls. “After a good surf session, she wouldn’t cough all night like usual but would sleep through the night peacefully. She also was out with young kids who have CF and wanted them to know, ‘It feels like you are out here playing, but you’re helping the machines you have at home keep you healthy.’ She was very, very ill and yet she felt so much better after surfing that she wanted to do it again the next day.” After three years of enjoying enough health to lift weights with her grandfather and surf almost daily, Melissa went into respiratory failure in 2015. “She had zero chance of living without new lungs,” Chris recalls. “She’s as tough as nails, and she was in the ICU for 60 days.What kept her alive was thinking about Joey, her boyfriend at the time, and thinking about surfing every day. After 27 days, she got a lung transplant, and it took her six months to recover.” In the film, Lee displays the often panicked notes that Melissa wrote when unable to speak, hooked up to an inordinate number of medical devices, showing the extreme anxiety she expe- rienced from being trapped in a hospital bed. The enormity of the disease hits during that (Clockwise from top left) Melissa with her dog Milo; Melissa with Annie Sours after completing a triathlon at Lake Berryessa, which she accomplished with only 35% lung function; on the beach; with friends Jessica Harwood, Mallory Russell and Courtney Middlebrook. Photos: Courtesy of the Pappageorgas Family