One of the pulmonary doctors (Dr. G) came to see me this morning and of course I was still asleep so I had to wake up to talk to him. The result of waking up and sitting up in bed was a massive coughing fit. I guess the good side of all of that is that the doctor got to see my coughing fit in action. He asked if this was how every morning went. In between coughing I said, “yep.” 

Dr. T (another pulmonary doctor that specializes in lung cancer but rounds on other pulmonary patients) came to see me this afternoon. He filled in all of my blanks I had from this morning when Dr. G saw me. My CT showed the usual scaring from CF progression and was also shadowing (infection) predominantly in the lower left lung and middle right lung. The CT also showed TIB (tree-in-bud) which is impaction in the bronchioles (small airways) or basically new growth of infection and lots of it most likely.  Many times TIB turns out to be a fungal infection but all the time.

The CF team talked about me in their meeting today and decided that doing a bronchoscopy (bronch) was the best next step. It is scheduled for 11am tomorrow. The bronch will give them a chance take a good look around in my lungs. They do lung “lavages/washes” which is basically them squirting medicine in my lungs and swishing it around catching all the yuck and sucking it. That’s the easiest way to explain it not in medical terms. The primary reason for the bronch is to take sputum samples from all over to see what grows because they think there is a fungus and/or another bacteria growing and hiding. I cough stuff out but that doesn’t mean I’m coughing out stuff from way down deep.

They also took more blood and urine for more testing. I told Dr. G that they can take my hair if it means getting answers. I did do an IV fungal medicine this afternoon as a “shot in the dark” to cover some of the fungi that it could be. It won’t cover all of them but we really are just in the dark right now on treatment ideas. Hopefully the bronch will give us answers and we will be heading in the right direction.

Until next time…