CF Clinic - sick visit

On Sunday, Azer was by himself watching a movie when suddenly, he was coughing non-stop and was struggling to breathe. He did an albuterol breathing treatment to see if it would stop. Unfortunately, he continued to cough for two full hours. He was exhausted by the time it started to get better. He coughed up the most mucus I've ever seen at a time. At the end, he coughed up some brown mucus. He said his upper airways hurt after this happened. The on-call doctor said to take him to the ER if another attack happened. Luckily, it hasn't happened again.

He went to clinic yesterday to get a PFT and an X-ray to see if there were any significant changes. His lung function was down slightly, but within normal range, especially for it being allergy season. The doctor said his X-ray looked about the same from last time. The doctor wondered if the attack was a mucus plug coming up. Just to be safe, he will be on a course of oral antibiotics.

Azer lost even more weight from last month, and a total of 8 lbs so far. The dietitian came in to discuss what he's been eating, and what else we can do to change this trend. The appetite stimulant medication he is on seems to help, but with evenings being so busy, he isn't able to take it consistently. Even though his appetite has been pretty good, he hasn't been making meal times a priority. They would like to try another appetite stimulating medication and see if it helps him at all. This medication has the possibility of interacting with other medications. They had to do an EKG first before they could prescribe this medication. It took a while to get a good EKG result, because he wouldn't lay still! 😄

In addition to possibly starting the new medication, he has to start doing an extra can of formula. The doctor warned him that people with CF tend to lose lung function along with weight.

First Day Home

We've been trying to do breathing treatments every 2-3 hours. Azer can only tolerate 2 minutes at a time on his chest. CPT is causing shooting pains going to his shoulders. Today, he says that it is getting harder to breathe that yesterday, and feels like his lungs are getting worse. His lungs definitely sound much noisier than yesterday, and he is producing more. I really feel like the largish spot on his X-ray may have been pneumonia instead of just simply mucus plugging.

After sending a semi-panic stricken email to the CF clinic, he will be starting steroids for the next week. Hopefully by the end of the course of steroids, the antibiotics will really start to kick in! 

Discharged

Azer had a very hard time doing a PFT test. He was refluxing and nearly vomited several times. Thankfully, the technician was very patient with him and let Azer blow when he was ready. He is, not surprisingly, about 10% lower than normal.

They switched him to a different antibiotic so that he can go back on the erythromycin. He was practically begging for it earlier.

His cough sounds pretty wet, and his x-ray showed some mucus plugging, which is probably why CPT hurts so much right now. Hopefully it will clear up soon, but we are very happy to be discharged!!

CF Clinic - Sick Visit

About two weeks ago, Azer seemed to have caught a virus. While the rest of his body recovered, it seemed like his lungs did not. In the evening, he was exhausted, after doing athletics at school and then baseball practice after that. It just felt like his breathing treatments weren't enough. He felt like his lungs were full of mucus, even though he sounded relatively clear when he coughed. His stomach has been full of mucus, which has been making him feel sick to his stomach, and definitely hasn't help his appetite.

We were waiting to see if treatments alone could clear this up, but three days ago, he ended up having shoulder pain when he took deep breaths, or coughed. We knew it was time for a clinic visit.

We were expecting low PFT's but he actually blew higher than he's been this year. He lost a few pounds, but it didn't affect his BMI too much. We saw a new doctor today, who noted that he really hasn't grown much in height this year, and hasn't grown at all since his last clinic visit. Azer will have a growth hormone stint next week and hopefully we will have some answers.

The doctor listened to him, and he sounded perfectly clear. He does have nasal drainage, so she wants us to go back to doing nasal rinses at least twice a day. Hopefully that will stop some of the mucus from ending up in his stomach and lungs.

Azer had two X-ray's today. One for his lungs, and another for his shoulder to see if the pain was possibly coming from an injury. It showed that his shoulder was fine, but that there is worsening in the areas of the lungs that have had consistent mucus plugging over the past few years. It also still shows bronchial wall thickening and bronchiectasis. If you watched this kid play baseball, you'd never believe his lungs looked like anything besides normal.

He will be on oral antibiotics for two weeks. They took a mucus sample as well has a swab from his nose to check for viruses. He ended up having a nose bleed from the swab, for some reason. If the culture shows Pseudomonas, we will be back on Tobi in addition to the oral antibiotics.

Update: The virus test came back as negative, still waiting on the results from the lung culture.

No Pseudomonas!!

So, for the past two weeks, Azer has said he felt more congested. He also started coughing up brown to black chunks of mucus in the morning. So, Monday we went to get cultures, PFT's and an IGE level check just in case he had ABPA again. 

He gained 2 pounds in a month, but his FEV1 was down a little from last month. 

A few days ago, we got the test result back from the IGE and it is lower than was last September. We've been waiting expectantly to see if he is culturing something, but today it finally came back negative for Pseudomonas and for Aspergillus! Yay!