Clem Clan: Jan 2011 clinic

Yesterday was Ethan's routine clinic visit. I was so happy that my husband Sean could go with us, he hadn't gone to an actual clinic visit since spring 2010. Its a long drive for us, a hour and half. Not to mention I insist on the first appointment of the day.... less germs in my mind. So we have to wake up 2 hours early to do treatments and eat breakfast before we go. Here is Ethan on the way with his new dvd player which is great for the trip there and during the apt while we wait.

Dr James was very happy with Ethan and his lungs were clear. He still isnt as tall and heavy as she would like. He is 25th for both and sean and I are 75th for adults. So we are shooting there. We got some new ideas... We are going to stop giving a high calorie shake as part of a snack in the afternoons and instead give it to him for bed. This way the 240 calorie shake doesnt affect his appitite for dinner. Hopefully he will start gaining. He has been on Zinc for two months now and apparently this is a new thing clinics are trying for babies diagnoised through newborn screening that are below the 50th percentile. I think that I was in denial for a long time about this because I was a late bloomer. However Liam is in the 90th percentile, thats a big difference between the two. So our only thing is trying to get Ethan bigger.

Ethan was also re-cultured and we will have the results next week. His doctor said that she knows how meticulous we are with breathing treatments so the psuedo must be here to stay :( However she said really not to sweat it... she is "banking on the cure very soon". She too is very excited about vertex. I am not discouraged about the psuedo... yeah I don't want it there, however I know that this is very common for CF patients. We are managing it and keeping it non mucodial.

Of course on the way to the clinic Ethan started coughing a nice dry cough... We are just increasing treatments and watching it. He already seems better today.

Well after every clinic visit we try to do something fun... and Ethan had both mommy and daddy all to himself. Something that hasn't happened since Liam was born. He gets one on one time but never both so we took advantage of this time and took him to a nice fatty meal at Culver's where he ate two chicken strips and fries! This is a big treat as we rarely let him eat like this :) After lunch we went to Science Central. I hadn't been there since I was in 7th grade! They have all kids of fun things there for hands on learning of science. Ethan ran NON stop the entire hour and half. Mommy, Daddy and Ethan were all exhausted.