Crazy few Months

Hello World!

Well Fall is always a crazy season for me. October is always full of Doctor visits which of course trickle into November. So a full medical recap:

I had some spots checked out on my face for skin cancer. They came back positive. So I will be having Mohs Surgery to remove it. I’ve had this before, almost 2 years ago or so. So I’m not that worried about it since I’ve been through it before. My lungs are looking good and stable - which is always great. I’m still considered in Chronic Rejection but I’m stable. For almost 2 months now I’ve been battling some kind of sickness. The Doctors have run every virus test they could and came up with nothing. We did several spetum cultures and swabs and really didn’t get anything back for a bacterial infection. Finally we just tried a basic blanket antibiotic- Augmented - it’s a penicillin based antibiotic and it seemed to have worked! So still not really sure what the sickness was. But  the antibiotic worked. During that sickness I lost my appetite and felt nauseous most days so I lost a bunch of weight. I was also coughing so much I wasn’t getting any sleep and was severely sleep deprived and exhausted. I’m finally starting to get my appetite back and sleeping through the night again. As far as my kidneys go they are not good. I’m now in stage 4 chronic kidney failure. There’s only 5 stages. But basically I’m headed to dialysis or transplant or both. I’ll know more in the coming months as I have an appointment with a kidney specialist towards the end of November and then when I go back to Cleveland in early January I’m going to meet with their kidney transplant team. Because of the increased kidney issues I’m starting to see swelling in my face and my legs. Right now it’s thought to be fluid retention. A diet change - AGAIN - could be in order, I’m still waiting to get some blood tests back. I have my next check up in Cleveland in early January and I have a follow CF Clinic in December. All in all - crazy couple months but hopefully we start getting some answers so we can figure out the next step.

Other than medical stuff I’ve been really good. We started fostering puppies over the summer. That is a lot of fun. We’ve had 6 little ones come through our home so far and we are scheduled to get 2 more this week. Puppies are lot of fun but a lot of work. Bri and I also escaped for a weekend away to NY to attend a wedding. Even though it was only 1 night, it was so nice to get away. Nothing that new and exciting on the home front. Our 1 chicken, Mary Poopins, is doing well. We plan on getting more chicks in the spring. We are looking forward to the holidays and the coming months. I recently got to witness my sister-in-law run in her first ever marathon- that was pretty cool. She ran in the NYC Marathon on the Breathe Team supporting the CF Foundation. So very cool. I’m also working on getting a new Great Strides Walk site up in running in my hometown. Being sick I haven’t done as much as I wanted but now that I’m feeling better I’m back at it!

I’ll try and update more often! Thanks for all the thoughts, vibes, prayers, juju or whatever you send my way. I do appreciate it. Much Love!

Breathe Easy