Baby's First Lung Infection

The past couple of weeks have been pretty tough. About 5 weeks ago, Gwena developed a cough. She had a fever for about a day, then the cough seemed like it was getting better on its own, and then it got worse again. I called the CF clinic and they put her on amoxicillin for two weeks. The cough improved but didn't entirely go away.

On March 1st I spent the day packing for what was supposed to be our last trip up to Stanford for the ISIS clinical trial. That day Gwena had a runny nose, but no other symptoms. We drove up that night and the next day, her cough started to get worse. Thursday morning we starved and sleep-deprived her for her infant pulmonary function test, took her to Stanford, and found out that because her cough was so bad (the worst it's ever been, I'd say) and they heard wheezing in her lungs, they couldn't do the test.

They prescribed her a steroid (Prelone) and we started her on it right away. She finally got to sleep and eat and we decided we might as well head for home. As much as I had tried to avoid catching what she had, by this time I was also suffering from a stuffy nose. We drove about half way home, then stayed the night in a motel. The next morning we drove the rest of the way, straight to her CF clinic. They prescribed her a new antibiotic, Bactrim, and did a throat swab culture.

Three days later, on Monday, Jon left on a business trip to New York, and Gwena and I went to visit my folks. The steroids my poor baby was on turned her into a crazy little terror, but we still had fun and she got to spend some good time with her grandma. The clinic called me to let me know Gwena had cultured Moraxella catarrhalis, which should be sensitive to the Bactrim.

We're all home now, Gwena is off the steroids, and her cough has improved considerably, though it's still lingering. We have a new appointment for the pulmonary function test, on March 31st. Hopefully the M. cat will be gone by then!