Heading In

I know, it's been a long time. I just haven't really been in the mood to write lately.

But, I figured that as always this is the easiest way to let everyone know... I will be heading in to the hospital for a regular tune up this week.

I've been coughing more and more in the past few weeks, and I've hardly gotten a full night's sleep in well over a month, at least without the help of some super strong cough syrup. Maybe one night a week I'm able to sleep the whole night through, but it hasn't been much.

We have a game plan already figured out, which is the way I prefer to do these things if at all possible. I do a PFT ahead of time and also provide a sputum culture so we can figure out before I get there what we're up against. Otherwise, it's potentially wasted time because my sensitivities to drugs and what kind of bacteria I'm culturing change regularly.

This time we are dealing with only ONE strain of bacteria that is fairly resistant, but not entirely, and my only options are all stuff I'm allergic to. Not the best news, but definitely not all bad since there is only ONE enemy this time to fight. So I will be admitted straight to the ICU to get the desensitization process going first thing, instead of, again, wasting time and spending one day on the floor doing nothing (but still paying for it, of course) and then going to the ICU on day 2. No thanks, I'll just get the ball rolling asap please.

As an aside, in case anyone is lost, a little CF301: Sputum Cultures here to explain everything I'm talking about. Every time I come in the hospital or a clinic appointment, I do a "sputum culture" which is where you cough up something and send it off to the lab. It takes 5 days to complete, because the ones they do for us CFers are very detailed. Once at the lab, they determine A. what bacteria are growing and B. the drug sensitivities of said bacteria/bugs. The two biggest players in the CF world are staph (particularly MRSA) and Pseudomonas. There are others bugs that are bigger concerns, but those two are the most common. There can be different strains of the same bacteria. Each one is different, each one can have different sensitivities. When I say "sensitivities" it means if the germ is "sensitive" or "resistant" to a specific medication. As in, a medication will work with something that is sensitive, but it won't if the strain is resistant. This is why sometimes, if you catch bronchitis and the antibiotic the doctor gives you doesn't work, it's because the bacteria you have is not 'sensitive' to the med and it needs to be switched. Except, for the average person, they're probably not going to run a sputum culture just to figure it out because most people don't have very resistant super special bacteria. I'm just special like that.

Randomly, I was going thru old emails today and found a culture from this exact same time last year with what appears to be the exact same strain. It had the same sensitivities and everything, so maybe this one has settled in for the long haul. However, at this time last year, there were 2 other strains of bacteria too, so that's why I am VERY happy to see only one came back this time. I guess we won the war against the other two—for now—so they have been banished from the land that is my airways.

I'm expecting this stay to be a bit different because I won't be on my usual floor. It is currently under renovations and apparently even when they do reopen it, they are short on nurses and aren't sure what they're going to do. So I have no idea if I will have the same nurses as before or not. I'm guessing not, which will be a shame. I always enjoy seeing some of my nurses. You develop a kind of friendship after a while, seeing them as often as I do.

But I'm feeling good and hopeful about this stay. I'm not as sick as sometimes where I'm in such dire need of meds, but I'm still definitely sick enough to constitute what we're doing. So I'm hoping that bouncing back won't be as difficult.