A few questions

[Guest guest]

Hi everyone, it's been a while that I have posted, but Lord knows

I love to lurk!! For those of you who don't know or don't remember

me -- I'm from Connecticut and our daughter is Abby who is

4 yrs old w/cf. She was diagnosed at 3wks old. Most of her

problems have been digestive related. They say she sounds clear in

her lungs so of course we are always thrilled about that! Anyhow,

Abby had this chronic cough for 2 mos. and they put her on

pediapred, bactrim and a decongestant as well as increasing nebs

and cpt. Well this didn't seem to work and when doing a follow

up and looking in her throat they saw that she had alot of stuff

flowing down her throat. She also sounds nasally and I was told

that the bridge of her nose seemed wide (something I never

noticed, I just thought kids had noses look like that til they got older)

So we went to have a CT scan and that showed she had lots of

polyps (sp) and a mucus wall (???). So we went to an ENT and

she is scheduled for surgery on 1/19/00. He told us that 90%

of the time they go home that day, 10% of time they get admitted

each kid is different he said. Question 1 is for those parents

with experience with this surgery -- what is to be expected, will

Abby be in a lot of pain, will she turn black and blue, will the

nasalness go away. Her nursery teacher seems to think she's

hard to understand and has suggested speech therapy but I

want to wait and see what happens with surgery. I know

('s daughter) went through this very recently.

I feel that Abby seems so young for all of this.

My second item is regarding pseudomonas. When we were at

clinic last time they cultured her throat (she can't cough up

mucus for a sputum culture yet so this is how we do it). Her culture

showed pseudomonas. We are now doing 2 weeks, 2 times a day

of tobi in the neb, and ceftin. (along with everything else). I

did not react well when I was told she cultured for this although

our clinic is wonderful and told me this is to be expected that

90-95% of pwcf have pseudo's. It just scares me so much and

I cry when I think about it. Again I thought Abby seemed so young

to have this already and I don't know if I understand it all and

what it means to her health and the health of her lungs. Is there

anything that can prevent this or is it just something that just

happens. I'm sorry I have rambled but Abby has been doing so

well and I guess all of this " new " stuff just scared me. Trust

me -- Abby is still Abby. Sometimes I look at her and get tears

in my eyes and worry so much about her and her future and then

5 minutes later I'm yelling at her for doing something she's not

supposed to be doing (HA HA) Any advice or comments would

be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks for having the patience to

read this and for being a great bunch of people!!