We Met When We Were 17, and Planned to Have Kids But She Only Lasted 18 Months- Touching Story

When Matt and Claudia met at just 17 years old, their love story began in the most romantic of ways.

“She was walking around the party with a smile on her face,” Matt, from Melbourne, tells Kidspot of the moment he laid eyes on the love of his life.

“I started talking to her and she instantly became the only person I’ve felt so comfortable being around, as if we had known each other long before then.”

“I had no idea just how serious cystic fibrosis was before that”
Behind her beautifully radiant face and bubbly personality, Claudia had spent a lifetime battling a severe form of cystic fibrosis (CF) after being diagnosed at six weeks old.

“You would never have known she had an illness that was so serious,” Matt remembers.

In what was the first ever relationship for both teenagers, Matt was accompanying Claudia to her doctors’ appointments just a week after they met.

“I had no idea just how serious cystic fibrosis was before that,” the now 22-year-old says.

“Once I knew what she was going through, my admiration for her just kept getting bigger and bigger. Every day for her would be hours of taking medication and having physio. It affected every part of her life.

“If she would get a cold, that would send her straight to hospital. It would affect her lung function and she would struggle to breathe. She never had more than a few weeks in a row at home because she was so unwell. It was never-ending.”

“It wasn’t a noble thing for me. I just loved her”
Despite Matt being a teenager, he would spend day after day, week after week at his girlfriend’s bedside, with never any question of where he would rather be.

“I always wanted to be around her and we had fun even if we were in hospital,” he says lovingly.

“It wasn’t a noble thing for me. I just loved her and I wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else.”

Regardless of her condition, Matt says Claudia was always an inspiration.

“She tried to be as positive as possible, and she battled hard not to let it overtake who she was,” he says.

“She did a really good job of that. She was so loving and fun and had a special way of connecting with everyone.”

“We wanted to get married and have kids”
The inseparable couple dreamt of a time when hospitals would deliver them joy rather than pain, and a future filled with the cries of a newborn rather than their own.

After all, the median lifespan for those with CF who live to adulthood is 47, which meant hope was on the horizon.

“We talked about the future a lot,” Matt says.

“We wanted to get married and have kids when we were young. She really wanted to be a mum and have a family – that was easily the biggest goal for her.”

Time and time again during their 18-month relationship, Claudia attempted to break up with Matt, purely out of selflessness.

“It happened a lot, especially in the early days,” he recalls painfully.

“She just felt guilty for putting me through everything. She really wanted me to be a dad and she didn’t want me to stop myself from being one even if she couldn’t be a mum, so I should go and find someone. I would just tell her that I would rather go through the hard times with her than an easy time without her. I genuinely wanted to be around her all the time, no matter what.”

“Her condition got really bad very quickly”
In 2019, Claudia contracted an infection caused by the deadly Burkholderia cepacia bacteria, which she had been living with since she was 12. It completely overtook her body beyond anything she had fought before.

“It was always bad, but it got really bad very quickly,” Matt vividly remembers.

“Everything started to fail. It was so hard [watching her suffer] because there’s nothing you can do. Most of the time we would just cuddle for hours. All I could do was hold her and be there for her and tell her that she didn’t have to do it alone.”

That year, Claudia underwent a double lung transplant as a last attempt to extend her life. The chances of success, however, were very, very slim.

“That’s when it all became very real, that she wouldn’t last more than a few weeks without it,” Matt recalls emotionally.

“I was there with her and her family and we just cried all night and she said her goodbyes – but we didn’t want to because we didn’t want to speak to her as if we would never see her again. We had to have hope for her. I gave her a kiss and told her that I loved her. She was the one who told us that everything would be OK.”

“I didn’t know how to live without her”
Tragically, the brave 18-year-old would never wake up from the surgery, taking her last breath following six weeks in a coma.

“There was just no way she could be saved so we had to let her go,” a heartbroken Matt says of that tear-filled day on May 17, 2019.

“I didn’t know what I was feeling was even possible. She was a part of me and I didn’t know how to live without her.”

Knowing how much Claudia would have wanted other CF sufferers – who include her 17-year-old brother, Jordan – to not endure what she went through, Matt has made it his mission to fundraise for research into a vaccine for the infection that took the life of his first and only love.

From October to December last year, he rode 3,000 kilometres over 49 days on a bicycle from the northern to the southern tip of New Zealand.

So far, he has raised more than $41,000 for The Claudia Project at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity.

“I just knew that she would be proud,” he says, honouring Claudia’s lasting legacy.

“That’s all I needed to keep going. She’s the strongest, funniest, most brave person I’ve ever known and I feel blessed every day that she chose me.”