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questions about my 7 year old son

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Posted 4/4/2009 6:36 PM (GMT -7)
Hi,

My son has been sick with a nast wet cough for over 6 months and has been on 8 courses of different antibiotics and is still sick.

His pediatrician thought it was sinus related and sent us to an ENT, who thinks his sinus ct scan doesn't look that bad.  We finally wound up at a lung specialist last week who said he had level 1 finger clubbing, low weight for his height and he also did pretty poorly on his lung function tests even after they gave him albuteral.

He's having a sweat test on Monday morning.  I'm just wondering if it's very unusual to be diagnosed at 7 years old?  he's on advair, singulair, clarinex, flonase and cleocin right now.  He's been on some big doses of prednisone recently as well that haven't seemed to help him much.  He also uses a xopenex nebulizer as needed.

I'm beside myself with worry right now!

Posted 4/5/2009 12:11 AM (GMT -7)
It's not that unusual. I have a friend who was diagnosed at 17, and have heard of others been diagnosed in their 30's

Some of your sons symptoms could be asthma related some could be coincedence.

From my experiance, I have learnt that I can distinguish asthma between colour sputum and type of cough.
I have also met someone diagnosed with only asthma, in a much worse situation than myself in terms of breathing abilities. Younger than me-she is wheelchair bound and in hospital a lot more often than me. It shocked me that she didn't have CF actually, because she had all the background knowledge of hospitals that I've only actually ever come across in CF patients.

Also about 2 years back, I was on inhalors for my asthma, I remember a doctor telling me, that actually my asthma symptoms weren't that bad, and I could do without the steroid part to my inhalor. He could tell because my lungs function tests had remained very level and stable regardless of how many infections and apparent big asthma attacks I had had. This was after an argument with them, over how many times they disregarded my symptoms as asthma rather than infection, when it was quite obviously opposite.

In me alone, asthma sputum is white and infection sputum is green, and very occasionally I'll confuse everything and start coughing yellow. Apparently though from what I've read. CF normal sputum should be yellow. But, I've never followed rules like that normally.

There is also Bronchitis, which I believe can give some similar symptoms to CF.

Well, in all that babble, I was trying to ease your worries, and at this stage there could be any number of things wrong with your son. I hope they find out the cause for your sons health quickly and that it is something easily fixable for him.

Sorry this response hasn't been written that well, and I've babbled on a bit. Just woke up, so still got morning head and I'm gonna be out all day, so wanted to respond to you now.

If you have any questions please ask!
Gemma
Posted 4/5/2009 6:05 AM (GMT -7)
Gemma,

Thanks for the reply. It's clear that SOMETHING is very wrong with him, it's the waiting to find out what it is that's so hard. I think they should have the sweat tests available immediately if someone needs one. I tried to get my son in sooner for the test and they told me that I was lucky to have to only wait a few days, the usual wait is over two weeks! We're scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:30, so we should have some results within a few hours of the test, they said. They also did a culture last week and there should be some results on that as well. He's such a sweet little person, I hope the sweat test is not scary for him.
Posted 4/11/2009 5:13 AM (GMT -7)
Hey there Suki,

How did the sweat testing go? It wasn't too traumatic was it? I was diagnosed at age 2, so can't remember what the sweat test involved or what it was like.

I hope you do not have to wait for too much longer, and that they can start finding something to make your son feel better.

Let us know how everything goes,
All the best
Gem
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