June 28, 2016

Heat Exhaustion And CF

This past weekend, Azer's team had a tournament. On Saturday, they had two games. He pitched several innings. He felt alright at the end of the day, but hadn't drank enough fluids and felt very tired.

Sunday, they played one game. He had started his morning bolus a little later than usual because he slept a little later. By the time he needed to start warming up on the field, he said his stomach still felt full, and he sat in the dugout to avoid vomiting. He had pitched a little while, and drank mostly water in the dugout between innings.

That evening at home, he still hadn't drank much more. We started to run some Gatorade through his G-tube, and he vomited it all up. He said he felt very tired. He ate a small amount of food for dinner. In the middle of the night, he ended up vomiting up his night feed. He said he was still feeling physically exhausted.

After communicating with the CF clinic, we decided to skip a bolus feed, and run Gatorade through his G-tube throughout the day.

We have been in the ER before due to dehydration. Apparently, in Cystic Fibrosis you can have heat exhaustion caused by low sodium in the blood. So, by drinking water in addition to aggressively sweating in hot weather, the salt in the body is not being replaced and this can cause hyponatraemia, which is having a low sodium level in the blood.

http://understandingcysticfibrosis.blogspot.com/2007/07/understanding-and-preventing-heat.html


June 10, 2016

New Mic-key Button Size - Again!

So, for about a month, Azer continued to have pain around his stoma. He said it was in the muscles around it. The last time he felt like this, we had to put in a larger sized Mic-key button. We managed to battle the infection of the stoma itself with the oral antibiotics, and special gauze they gave us. However, the pain remained when he coughed, and when his stomach was not completely full. In May, the ostomy nurse didn't think he needed a bigger size. I could tell he was getting tired of dealing with this pain, so we were able to get a quick clinic visit with the ostomy nurse again.

Azer explained to her how it felt, even though the button could still turn freely. She left to go find the next size up, but it was unavailable, and the one she did have was a whole half size longer. She agreed to put it in him, and see if we have any leakage.

Within seconds, he was pain-free. The whole drive home, he was relaxed and kept commenting on how much better it felt. I guess he didn't realize how much discomfort he was in until it was relieved!

This is what happens when he sits down lol
Bigger Size


Last week, he ended up coming down with a virus that came with a fever and cough. He was feeling pretty bad. Luckily it was short lived, but as it frequently happens, the virus leaves, but the congestion stays. We have been doing short sessions of manual CPT 4-5 times a day to try to help him clear the extra mucus. It's hard to say at this point if he won't need antibiotics soon, but it definitely helps him breathe better.