Hello, again

Today, we said hello to our Pleasanton clinic. Friday night, Ben had a low grade fever. It went away by Saturday morning but was soon followed by a dry cough. Well, that cough has gotten worse as of yesterday so we headed on in today for a culture.

Our clinic does not just give out antibiotics. They want to see him, listen to his breathing and do a culture to find out if anything is growing in his little lungs. This is a GOOD thing. Too often I see CFer’s getting handed antibiotic after antibiotic without going into further detail or examination. This is not necessarily good for a couple reasons. One, different bacteria requires different antibiotics. If you don’t know what’s growing in our little CFer’s lungs, how can you properly treat it? Two, I don’t want Ben being filled with unnecessary antibiotics that aren’t treating the problem. Three, I don’t want Ben growing resistant to antibiotics. He’s going to be taking them throughout his life and the last thing we need is for him to build up a resistance to certain ones. Four, you don’t want antibiotics covering up a bigger problem that may be going on. They may treat the symptoms but not the overall problem.

I have a refill on Bactrim for emergency cases such as, we’re out of town or it’s a holiday weekend.Our clinic trusts me enough to know the signs of possibly needing it. However, we haven’t had to use it yet because I like to give Ben a couple days to get over the cough himself.

While being in the car for three hours and missing our Gymboree class is not fun, I am thankful our clinic handles Ben’s care this way. Once again, Ben receives the best care because I refuse to settle for anything less.

Now we just keep our fingers crossed for clean results or results that can be treated with oral antibiotics. I am not letting the dreaded p-word enter my vocabulary just yet.