50!!

the eFlow nebulizer - fancy!

I hit 50 today (fev1) at CF clinic.* Yay! I was at 50 or slightly higher two times last year, and before that it was a couple of years since I had been that high. The true coolness to it is that I am continuing to go down on my Prednisone, which has inflated my numbers the last few years. I'm currently at 3mg/day, if that means anything to you, and hoping to be off it entirely at some point in the near future.

Other news from clinic: I may be switching from Zenpep, my current digestive enzyme, which I have been on for only a month. Let's just say it is slowing me down and I'm not as happy with it as I was my old Pancrease. I am trying a third enzyme now, Creon, which offers free vitamins. I hate to switch so much, especially when the reason for the initial switch was a pause in manufacturing of my old brand while it was rebranded, but it will be worth it to find something I am happy with.

I had to turn in all of my stuff from the aztreonam (an inhaled antibiotic) extended access program that I was on. I was sad about that because I am in the middle of a 28-day cycle of this drug, which I need three times daily, and I only have three nebulizers to do it in (whereas I had built up to nine with my new ones from the company plus my old ones from expanded access) - which means that I have to wash nebs every single day! That truly, truly sucks. One of the worst things about CF in a day-to-day sense is washing nebulizers. It is such a pain in the rear!

I continued to sing the praises of NAC, a supplement I've been on seriously for several months now, but my doctor is not as excited as I am about it. He wants to see the research done to prove that I am not just a fluke. But how can I be a fluke? People with CF don't just improve with nothing. In fact, even with the addition of therapies, they often continue a slow decline. Not only have my numbers gone up, and I have not been sick (plus other benefits I won't mention here,) but my Prednisone, as I said before, has continued to go down with few side effects. I have always had tremendous problems coming off Prednisone and it wasn't until the NAC that I was able to do it so smoothly.

Even though my doctor is a skeptic, he said that UNC might be interested in a simple research study with respect to NAC and me ... they would want me to drink it (like I do now) or inhale it (like is usually done for other conditions that use it) and then test how much is actually getting into my lungs. Sounds pretty painless and definitely for a good cause.

What else...oh yeah, did I mention that my fev1 was 50%??? :) :) :) Kind of makes up for all the other crap I've been dealing with lately.

*For those of you who don't know what this means, 70 or higher would usually be considered "mild" or, for me, low maintenance/low symptom CF; 30, on the other hand, is usually when you start to think about transplant.