Getting Ready for Vacation

Well, two of the 5 of us are on antibiotics. I got bronchitis last week and I'm still hacking my brains out. Drew started sounding kind of junky last week, maybe around Wednesday. I called the doctor on Friday when he was sounding progressively worse. He wasn't having any trouble breathing, just lots and lots of coughing, and a gunky nose. I know that not all colds that CF kids get turn into bacterial infections, but with Drew's malacia, more often than not, when he's got extra mucus in his airways it starts to grow bacteria. Plus, with me having bronchitis and being on antibiotics, I just didn't really see Drew getting better on his own.

The other factor weighing on my decision to call the doctor and request antibiotics was that we're leaving for vacation on Friday. I don't want to drive to Charleston, SC and end up doing airway clearance 4 times a day and having Drew struggling to breathe and miserable. We got him on Azithromyacin Saturday morning and he started sounding better by Sunday. He's still a little junky sounding. We're added hypertonic saline once more per day and are using the vest 3 or 4 times (depending on our schedule). He's still needing Atrovent a little bit more than he normally does but I think once he gets some of this cleared we will get back to normal.

I have to say that over the past several months, there's been a dramatic and noticeable improvement in the sound of his breathing (read: I think his malacia is getting better). It will be nice when you don't hear him breathing all the time. We're use to it, but people who don't know him look at us like he's going to croak. Lucky for Drew, i'm not one to keep my words to myself and quickly quiet their chatter about how sick that poor kid must be. If they only knew.

I haven't started packing yet for our trip. We're driving. I'm not looking forward to that, but I'm not really to worried about it either. When we went to Philadelphia a few months ago, we only stopped twice on the way out and once on the way back, making the 8 hour trip in under 9 hours. Google tells me it will take about 10-11 hours to get to Charleston. We're planning to get up a little early, get all Drew's breathing treatments done, and head out by about 8am. We have a hotel booked but we're not sure if we're going to use it or push through. We can't check into our house until Saturday, but Martin has a brother who lives in Charleston that we might crash with. We'll see how the trip is going. I would love to do it all in one day only because then we don't have to spend any time in the car the next day. I guess we'll see.

It should be a pretty fun vacation. There are 22 of us staying in a giant 10 bedroom house a block from the beach. We have a pool too. We're going with Martin's whole family. Ella will have a blast playing with her cousins and it will be nice to hang out with his parents & siblings and their spouses too. Mostly, it will be a nice break from the everyday here in Cincinnati. I love these kids dearly and I wouldn't change my job for the world, but its nice to have a break in your routine. And I've heard that being near the salty ocean with the salty ocean air will be like giving Drew his Hypertonic Saline 24/7 and hopefully improve his breathing. Maybe this could work out to be an argument for getting a beach house :)