Thursday, April 30, 2009

Only a Number

Yesterday Shawn had clinic. His FEV!% was down to 35%, or at least that's the result he got. Crap, crap and crap.
Everything else looks great, his x-ray looked fantastic, the doctor brought up a variety of Shawn's past x-rays for comparison on his monitor. The lungs appear to be in great shape. But that stenosis is fucking up his FEV1%.
Right?
That makes sense.

If Shawn is trying to push air through and The FEV1% is the amount you are able to push through in that 1st second, and he is trying to push it through a very narrow passageway, it makes perfect sense that that particular measurement would justifiably suck.

I was thinking about plumbing and if are using 1" rather say 2" copper as a supply you are going to a very different result. The amount of water able to flow is going to be decreased, reagrdless of the size of the water heater. His total volume nubers are good.
Anyhoo of course whether there is a resonable explanation that doesn't seem so dreadful or not it still has to be dealt with. But this seems o.k. to me.
Things can be done, mechanical things to change this.

So the Team has put this plan into action. CT scan (which Shawn had later that day)
Monday morning, Pre-Op testing, PFT's in the lab, then OR , where they will bronch him, perform dilitation, debride if neccesary, look around, tidy up, and biopsy for rejection. So far there have been no other clinical indicators to suggest rejection other than the low FEV1% so I'm not too fearful of "R" being an issue.

Ugh.

He feels good, looks awesome, he is doing everything.


*this post got off on a wild tangent so I copied it and made it into the post titled "..peaceful easy feeling.."

3 comments:

Kellee said...

CF sure does suck!
Im glad despite the FEV1 that everything is going well!
We have a clinic visit Monday and Im kinda nervous =/..I really dread those PFT's.

XOX

Tina said...

I know, ugh those numbers have some power.
Hope you guys have a good visit Monday! I'm sending you some good vibes!

Christy said...

Girllllll... tell Shawn to stop trying to get attention. He's had enough already!!! :)

Seriously, I'm glad he's feeling good. That is a real big plus. I know you guys are so sick of this dilation surgery though!!! Why isn't there a permanent fix?