Whew

It's over.

Whew!

Was it fun? Nope, not at all. But did it go well? Ya, you betcha! ;)

Our day started at 1 am when we woke up Gavin for one last "breakfast" since he couldn't eat anything after 2 am. He was a bit confused but ate a huge bowl of rice cereal. He was then able to drink any clear liquids until 6 am. We woke him up again around 4:30 to keep him sleep deprived and tried to get him to drink some fluids but he wasn't feelin' it, he only took three or four gulps over the next hour and a half. Oh well, at least he got in that big ole bowl of cereal.

We got to the hospital a half hour early, surprisingly there wasn't any traffic (with our luck, if we had left later traffic would have been horrendous) and the children's imaging and sedation department was very easy to find. We waited...and waited...and waited in the waiting room (I know we were early, but still!) and watched several other kids get checked in and then finally, it was our turn!

But oh yea...

There was still more waiting. :)

After a little bit of hanging out in "our room" the nurses started checking Gavin's blood pressure, temp, etc and got an IV started (got it on the FIRST try woohoo!). His sedative was an oral medication, but they got in the IV just in case he woke up between the two procedures. Our respiratory therapist, Anne, then did a quick nasal swab...its about as fun as it sounds...the nurse drew some blood...and we had one very crabby and mad baby on our hands! Once Gavin got his meds it took about 15 minutes for him to be completely "out." Then they swooped in, grabbed our sleeping little man, and got everything started.

Then there was a lot more waiting for Casey and me.

Once his PFT was completed our pulmonologist (a different pulm did the procedure) came into tell us everything went smoothly and his results were great! His FEV 0.5 was 125% I won't even try to explain this except to say it is a measure of how fast he could blow out the air in his lungs in 1/2 a second. When he gets older they will test how long it takes in one second. Yes, there were a bunch of other numbers tested, if you really want to know more about those and the results, shoot me an email. I won't bore you all with a bunch of numbers.

After the bronch was completed, our pulmonologist came in and told us everything looked great, and showed us a sample of his mucus. Oh the joys of being CF parents :) She told us his mucus looked "great." I wasn't aware that mucus could ever look great, but apparently it does! When I asked her what it would look like in twenty or so years, she interrupted me and said...hopefully it will be another 40 or 50 years until it looks a lot different! So reassuring for us to hear and just another reason why we love our docs so much! :)

Oh, they did not need to give any more medication through his IV. The oral sedative did the trick for both procedures. Anddddd our doc will be learning more about VX-770 next week...hopefully I'll get more updated info from her soon! She is very optimistic about the results thus far!!!

So do you think that we relaxed when we got home? Yea right! While Gav fell asleep in the car and stayed asleep for several more hours, Casey and I did some power cleaning before our realtor got here.

Did we have it ready enough for him to take pictures?!? Of course not! But I am determined to get all of the remaining last touches completed this week so he can come by, get pics and list our house! He also recommended listing our home for more than we expected, a plus!

We lucked out, where we live the housing market has not been affected by the economy...the homes have held their values and are still selling quickly. Let's hope ours goes quickly as well!

Now I am off to try to remember how to lower the mattress in Gav's crib. He just managed to pull himself onto his knees and is staring at me as if to say..."look at me mama! I am such a big boy!" Yikes...he just turned six months....any bets on when he'll start walking?

For info on infant PFTs click here
For info on bronchoscopies click here
For info on FEV click here