We received preliminary lab reports on the stuff they sucked out during the bronch on Wednesday. Looks like there wasn’t a fungus hanging out in there and just my normal resistant pseudomonas strand and lots of it. I know I said it can take 2-3 weeks for fungus to show up. I should have specified that I meant it takes that long to identify what the fungus is. I’m guessing that things start growing pretty fast in the lab environment and they check it under the microscope often. Bacterial and fungus look different in the pattern they grow so I’m sure they can tell that everything is bacteria at this point.  I don’t believe fungus will show up later but I guess you never know and this is me we are talking about. My body NEVER plays by the rules.  We have to wait for antibiotic sensitivities to come in over the weekend which will hopefully be over the weekend.

I was up with painful coughing fits last night multiple times therefore I didn’t get a lot of sleep. As the day has gone on my lung pain is a little more tolerable with a little less pain meds. The goal is no pain and no pain meds obviously. The pain is from them messing around in my lungs adjitating the airways and a lot of coughing.

My oxygen needs have been upped since the bronch. Yesterday I was on 5 liters most often day with sats in the low 90’s on 4-5 liters. Today I’ve been on 3-4 liters with sats between 95-99. However when I was napping today my nasal cannula got wiggled off and the only reason I knew it was because the monitor started beeping at me saying my sats were 86. Oops! It also drops low when I have a coughing fit and considering I have a lot of those my O2 drops often.

A question that is commonly asked is “Since they sucked all the stuff out you don’t have anymore in there right and your lungs should be better now?” I wish it was that easy, I really do. For one, they didn’t get everything out. I’m sure there was something left behind. My lungs are constantly producing thick sticky mucus, hence the reason there was so much in there. I will never be able to cough it all out. There will always be more mucus in there than I can ever imagine. So to answer the question…yes they sucked out a lot but it was not to clear it out and start over or cure by any means. We press on and continue to treat what has been cultured. I have already coughed stuff up since the bronch so it is never ending. Haha We will never kill the pseudomonas all the way because there is always new mucus in there getting infected with the old stuff. We treat symptoms basically since I am always sick. If we went off of sputum cultures I would never be off of IVs.  When I start to feel bad that’s when I start IVs. When I feel better I stop them after a normal 3 week course. Hahaha. It’s the vicious CF cycle.

I will update when I hear about the antibiotic sensitivities and if there will be any med changed. Oh that reminds me, there was one med change (haha). I’m getting a burst do steroid (solumedrol), now that we know there isn’t a fungus in there and the steroid won’t cause problems making it grow we can do the solumedrol. Ok I think that is all. Hahaha

Until next time…