Welcome to Flashback Friday! The idea is to post about anything in your past. Put up pictures of yourself in embarrassingly dated clothing. Tell the story of something that has happened. The arena is wide open. Chose any medium you wish, but focus on some element of your past that you wish to share.
This was taken in 1990. My daddy, me and my new baby sister Gracie was 1 week old.
Just like any other child I loved to run and play, and I loved to hold my little sisters bottle :) I was just you're average, happy, healthy, normal 4 year old, or so we thought....
Up until I turned 5 I was never sick. I could run and play and i had so much energy. I had never really been sick a day in my life, and I grew faster even than a lot of children do and then.... I "got sick". It was almost like someone flipped a switch. Because the healthy, happy little girl began to lose her energy, developed massive diarrhea, and started getting a cough that no matter what my parents gave me wouldn't stop it. This went on for an entire year. I continued to get sicker and sicker. I coughed every single breath to the point me or no one in my house got any sleep. I went to the doctor every single day in which they kept treating me for asthma and allergies!!! NOTHING helped. Eventually I couldn't walk anymore, I couldn't breathe. My daddy had to carry me everywhere. I stopped eating, because everything went strait through me. I was 6 years old and 32 pounds, skin and bones and an extremely swollen stomach. If you were anywhere close to me you would hear me gasping for air I was so rattly. Pretty much you could hear me before you saw me. Basically I was knocking on deaths door.
Then an amazing person, my fathers friend told his childs doctor some of my symptoms and he immediately said I had cystic fibrosis. This was in August 1992. My father took me in for a sweat test at this doctors (who is the same doctor that is Lily's pediatrician) office. It's sad I don't remember how sick I was too much but the one thing that sticks out in my mind was the sweat test. It really freakin hurt! They said it wouldn't but trust me I bawled my eyes out.
Here is a picture from March 1992. You can't really tell I was sick here too much. Of course this was right before I was super sick, but in the middle of my illness.
It is amazing how I have progress once I started taking albuterol nebs and CPT and I got those enzymes. And of course the course of antibiotics that I was given. I put on a lot of weight, and since have had no probs keeping it on (so far) and so far I have been relatively healthy for a cfer. Though life with cystic fibrosis isn't what I dreamt of as a little girl I am so very thankful for our family friend who cared enough to ask another doctor and try to help me, and to the doctor who was smart and knew what to test me for. I am so thankful that cf was found when it was. I couldn't have lasted too much longer in the shape that I was in.
Wow, what a story! I got diagnosed at 6 months old. I did have the typical "sick to the point of dying" experience but it was for an unusual reason - I had a reaction to a medication at 4 months old and started throwing up, and because CFers deplete electrolytes so fast, I got into a cycle where I couldn't stop. But I did end up getting diagnosed with CF. Obviously, though, I don't remember any of that! It's always interesting to me to hear later diagnosis stories - I am so glad that all 50 states now require newborn testing!!!
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