Courageous Coen
Coen Ashton: I'm basically suffocating myself from inflamed lungs.
TIM NOONAN: 14-year-old Coen Ashton loves to smile but laughing could kill him.
Coen Ashton: I actually had to retrain myself to laugh a few years ago so it doesn't make me cough but it backfires when I really laugh really hard because it puts too much pressure and then it makes me cough. So in a way it's just a deadly circle of laughter.
TIM NOONAN: Coen has cystic fibrosis and he needs a double lung transplant.
Coen Ashton: Nothing to see down there! Nothing at all!
Dr Glen Westall: So, I've Coen's chest X-ray up on the screen. The lungs should be black. What we're seeing here is lots of areas of white shadowing on both sides which represents damaged and destroyed lungs. He's essentially operating on half of one lung and without a lung transplant, Coen is in danger of dying within the next 12 to 24 months.
TIM NOONAN: Dawn and Mark are Coen's parents.
Dr Glen Westall: Both your parents have to be carriers of this gene and if your parents - both parents are carriers - then there's a one in four statistical chance that the offspring that they have will have cystic fibrosis.
TIM NOONAN: His younger brother, Kai, doesn't have the illness.
Coen Ashton: Too slow!
Coen was unlucky.
TIM NOONAN: His lungs are overflowing with deadly bacteria.
Coen Ashton: I've only got under 30% of my lungs left so for me to get around is quite hard. All memories of running has kinda faded away into a dream because that's the only place I can run now is in my dreams. The closest thing I've got to it is riding a motorbike or something like that and that's the only way I can get air in my face, you know?
TIM NOONAN: How do you stay positive?
Coen Ashton: I'm just...stubborn. I'm just plain well stubborn, you know? If I put my mind to something, I've just got to do it or there's got to be
a damn good reason why I can't.
TIM NOONAN: Coen needs new lungs but Australia has one of the lowest organ donation rates in the world. So Coen decided to do something big to wake Australia up.
Coen Ashton: I started off with camels. My mum says, "No, camels bite, spit and fart. "I'm not doing anything with camels." Then Dad said "Why don't you ski the Murray River?" and I said, "Why ski when you can jet ski?!"
Dawn: Training was hard for Coen because he was spending so much time in hospital. He wouldn't tell the doctors what he was planning on doing because he was worried that they wouldn't let him.
TIM NOONAN: Coen rode for seven weeks, 2,000 kilometres, and conquered the longest waterway in the country. Along the way, he persuaded over 1,000 people to become organ donors.
ANNOUNCER: Coen Ashton.
The effort won him this year's Child of Courage medal at the Pride of Australia awards.
Dawn: Proud's not the word. He's an amazing kid and, um, he'll go a long way. He'll do well. He has to.
TIM NOONAN: How strong is he?
Dawn: I'm hoping he's going to be strong enough. How are you feeling today, Coen?
Coen Ashton: Crap.
TIM NOONAN: The trip took its toll. Coen's lung function dropped below 30 percent.
A month ago, he was short-listed for a lung transplant. It meant the whole family moving to Melbourne, close to the hospital and on 24/7 standby. What's it like waiting for that phone call?
Coen Ashton: Oh, every time the phone rings, I crap my pants. It's crazy! It's like, there's no "OK, it could be now." It could be any time or could be midnight, you know? Late at night when the phone rings, that's really when I start crapping myself because it's like "Hang on, who would be ringing at this time?!"
TIM NOONAN: Do you get much sympathy with the girls?
Coen Ashton: Yeah, I kinda do. That's how I get most of my girlfriends is through sympathy, you know? Yeah, I don't know how I'm gonna do it after transplant, you know? I'll have to figure out a new way to get them after that!
TIM NOONAN: If you had a message for Coen, what would you tell him?
Jess Lucas: If I had a message, I would tell Coen... ..to don't give up, just never give up. Every day's a new day and you just can't give up. Life's too precious.
Coen Ashton: It's gonna make ME cry soon.
TIM NOONAN: One girl who knows exactly what Coen's going through is 17-year-old Jess Lucas.
Jess Lucas: No-one realises how hard it is sometimes and you just have to suck it up, just suck it up and just move on.
SINGS: # Life is a battlefield, don't sweat upon your circumstance.
Take control, pick up your shield. #
TIM NOONAN: It seems incredible a girl that has problems with her lungs can have such a beautiful voice.
Jess Lucas: Yeah. My voice is a part of me. I sing every day. It makes me happy.
TIM NOONAN: Jess was five weeks old when she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
Jess Lucas: You just learn to deal with it.
TIM NOONAN: Recently, Make-A-Wish-Foundation flew Jess to New York to see her idol, Britney Spears, perform in concert. The real surprise for Jess was that she too got a chance to strut her stuff.
Jess Lucas: Her dancers said to me, "Follow us on stage" and I just went, "Oh, my God!" Britney made everything worth it.
SINGS: # This is my destiny. #
TIM NOONAN: When Sony Music heard about it, they offered Jess studio time to record one of her own songs, 'My Destiny'.
I can win a losing battle. #
TIM NOONAN: Well, I finally found someone who also knows how it feels to feel like this and you're right, you don't give up. My little motto is what don't kill you will only make you stronger. If I have a transplant, it gives me a second chance at life. I'll be able to run, I'll be able to laugh, be able to play sports. I'll be able to do all that stuff that I've hardly ever been able to do.
TIM NOONAN: Now what would you say to everybody sitting at home who's not on the donor registry?
Jess Lucas: Just donate, just donate your organs because it's not too much to ask for people out there that need it really badly.
Coen Ashton: It makes all the difference in the world. Sometimes it's a touchy subject because it involves death and all the rest of it but it also involves a second chance for kids like me.
