bits and pieces

Boy have things gone downhill since the last post.... Ay yi yi!!! Lance has continued to cough, almost non-stop, since his birthday. We've done lots and lots of treatments, as well as continued the steroid and antibiotic we started last Friday. Poor guy hasn't been able to sleep much at all. Yesterday, he woke up a little before 5:00 a.m. and was up for the whole day. Today, he woke up around 3:30 a.m. and has been up all day. Of course, you know he wasn't the only one up. :( The steroids always mess with his sleep--but usually not this bad. I noticed last night that his cheeks were getting full--another yucky side effect of the steroids. Well, this morning he woke up with one cheek swollen, much more so than the other. It reminded me of a time about 2 years ago that he looked similar--nobody could figure out the problem--and we didn't contact our docs in Fort Worth--MISTAKE!, so it must be a tooth, right? Wrong. But we only found out it wasn't a tooth after they opened it to see healthy tissue. We're still waiting for that tooth to abscess because they said it would only be a matter of time since they opened it up. Nice.

Anyway, after several stressful hours, many phone calls and a chest x-ray later today, we found out that he has "sub-q emphysema". I'm pretty sure that isn't spelled correctly and the info I'll give you may only be partially correct. I'm sleep deprived, remember? He has evidently coughed so hard that air has been forced out of his lungs in a way it doesn't usually exit. This leaves air in places it shouldn't be with nowhere to go. So, he has little air pockets in his chest wall, his neck and his face. He is so swollen. I'm sure he's miserable. We were concerned for a while that part of his lung collapsed, but thankfully, it hasn't. It could still happen, but hopefully it won't. I don't think this kind of thing happens in healthy lungs, and the nurses recognized the symptoms right away, so I guess it happens often enough in CF. When you mash the swollen areas, they sort of pop or crackle. It's the weirdest thing... Unless things get worse, it's something that should resolve itself. Y'all pray that it does and FAST, ok? Sorry for the downer update, but I just wanted to let you all know what was happening... Love you all!

It's a little hard to tell just how swollen he is just from the pic, but trust me---it's a lot! And, actually right now, the swelling is more evenly distributed over both sides. Earlier, he was more lopsided...