Cystic fibrosis is no joke. Philly comedian Kirsten Michelle Cills makes it one anyway

Driving the news: Cills is back home in Philly for Thursday's Roses & Thorns show at City Winery, a Cystic Fibrosis Foundation event aiming to raise $30,000 toward a cure.

• The usually L.A.-based show returns to Philly for the second straight year, with Chloe Radcliffe and Chris Gazzard also in the lineup.

Zoom in: Cills just signed with a new management team and has been touring the country over the last year in cities like Houston, Portland, Chicago and Boston.

• Typically, she'll do six to eight shows a week, but some nights she'll cram in four shows.

• She's like the Energizer Bunny, with an oxygen pack occasionally strapped to her back to help her breathe during rough weeks when she has flare-ups.

What she's saying: "It's a very boots-on-the-ground job," she tells Axios. "It's why most comics, once they get famous enough, start doing film."

• "It's tough to have a life. But that's also the fun part. It's also what I'm addicted to about it."

Catch up quick: The 31-year-old Cills bartended for years until she decided to pursue stand-up comedy full-time a few years ago.

• It was a risky bet, and there have been days over the past few years when Cills worried about whether she could pay her rent or afford health insurance, since she doesn't have the benefits that come with more steady careers.

Yes, but: Cills has a circle of family and friends she can lean on.

• And she has an incredible belief in her ability to keep cranking out comedic material, much of it centered on the "greater macabre of life and making lightness of the very dark stuff" that comes with living with CF.
• Her other calling cards: A "slutty skirt" and a "horror movie graphic T-shirt."

Zoom out: Nearly 40,000 people in the U.S. are living with cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disease that causes mucus build-up in the lungs, making breathing difficult and leading to other complications.

• As medicine advances, so has survival: Half of people with CF born between 2021 and 2025 are now predicted to live to age 66 or beyond, per the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
• That's thanks in part to the breakthrough drug Trikafta, which has helped transform survival and quality of life for many people living with the condition.
• Cills, not a candidate for that drug, instead manages her condition with a cocktail of nearly two dozen medications.

"Some days, it's just clocking in, even when you are having the worst day of your life," Cills tells Axios.

• "And you still have to then go be a clown on stage and make other people laugh, even though you were crying in the green room."

What's next: For now, it's "full speed ahead."

• No one knows when the clock will strike midnight for the last time in their life, but Cills is aware that her minute and second hands tick faster.

"The everyday of being a comic is like a roller coaster of, like, 'Oh, I should quit,' and then having a great show and being like, 'Oh my God, I'm the best.' And then we just sort of do that on repeat."

If you go: 18+ show starts at 7pm. Tickets: $50 or $25 for the livestream