Week 306; Strepping up

Despite it being summer, in the early days of this week Lemon developed a cough. My first thought was more allergies, perhaps a fresh bloom of some pollen-rich plant. But, the cough didn't sound like allergies to me, it was wetter and louder than the normal allergy cough. And, he threw up on Wednesday night, while allergies basically never make him throw up. So, I was puzzled. But, he seemed sort of OK on Thursday, although the cough was sounding bad enough that I was beginning to think about starting Cayston (ugh, bad timing with a vacation coming up). I decided to wait until Friday to see what was happening. 

On Friday morning, Lemon still seemed pretty OK although he said that his stomach hurt in the morning. But, that happens every now and again, to be expected with overnight tube feeds. So, we got in the car to go to camp. On our way to camp, I got an email from the camp saying that they had confirmed cases of both strep throat and pneumonia among the campers. FABULOUS. I dropped Lime off at camp but took Lemon home. And good thing since he continued to not feel well on the way home and then of course threw up in the car WITHIN SIGHT OF OUR HOUSE. I mean I can't blame him, when it happens it happens. But really? Not 90 more seconds?

He spent the rest of the day loafing around the house. I gave him some ibuprofen and fluids and he seemed to perk up, he had a slight fever but no other symptoms besides the cough and the puke. I decided not to start Cayston since I figured this might be a camp virus thing, not a CF lung thing after all. Finally, on Saturday morning, he came into our bedroom at a little before 6 crying because his throat hurt so much. Aha. Strep. You know it's serious when your CFer is begging you to take him to the doctor ASAP. So, we went to urgent care (8 a.m. Saturday is an awesome time to go, btw), and the pediatrician took one look at his throat and said, yep, it's strep. As an added bonus Lemon also had a slight ear infection. So, within 15 minutes of arrival, we left with a prescription for amoxicillin. Luckily, after 24 hours of amoxicillin, Lemon was pretty much back to himself. Of course he lost a pound and a half because of all this but what else is new.

In any event, I am just infinitely grateful that it was a random, totally typical childhood illness and not some horribly timed CF exacerbation. We still will have to do amoxicillin for pretty much our entire trip but that is soooo much easier than Cayston, we hardly notice, except for the slight nostalgia of doing a liquid medicine through the G-tube again, as we did every day in times of yore.

So, Bostonians, we will be with you soon! If we don't have plans to see you yet, ping me, let's make some. I have it on good authority that Lemon is no longer contagious...