Feb 29th

Feb. 29th: Happy Leap Day! Today wasn't the most fun leap day ever but it certainly was a memorable one. Jude had his first bronchoscopy today. Because he has had clean cultures for a while but still exhibits some symptoms of infection his CF doc thought it best to do a bronch to get a more accurate picture of what is going on in his lungs. For kids as small as Jude, the general way they culture is to stick a swab in the back of their throats so that they gag and cough. The sputum is then collected and sent for culture. This isn't always foolproof though so a bronchoscopy is sometimes needed. This also provides an actual picture into hislungs so the doctor can see if there is anything abnormal going on. Jude's doc was surprised by how good his lungs look for a CFer of his age. He saw some excess sticky mucous which is to be expected as well as some mucous plugs which are also normal for a CFer. He cleaned those out as best he could. He said other than that, Jude's lungs didn't look any worse than someone with asthma. We were happy to hear this. It takes a few days to grow a culture so we will be waiting for the results for a little while. Jude did great in the procedure but did not enjoy the waking up part. He wanted to get "outta here" while we were in the recovery room and didn't really calm down until we got to the lobby and were headed to the car. I think this procedure was definitely a bit harder on me than it was on him. Hopefully we won't have todo it again for a while! Here's Jude in the hospital gown he wore for a total of 5 minutes!