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We’ve arrived!  We are now officially in the world of PFT’s, and keeping an eagle’s eye on Asher’s numbers.  Pulmonary Function Tests (PFT’s) are lung function tests that evaluate how well your lungs work.  The tests determine how much air your lungs can hold, how quickly you can move air in and out of your lungs, and how well your lungs put oxygen into and remove carbon dioxide from your blood.  The two numbers we’ll most be focused on are his FVC, and FEV percentages.

~Forced vital capacity (FVC). This measures the amount of air you can exhale with force after you inhale as deeply as possible.

~Forced expiratory volume (FEV). This measures the amount of air you can exhale with force in one breath.  FEV1 is the amount of air you exhale in 1 second.

Quite honestly, this is a new road for us, so we’re just getting used to all the numbers and what they really mean, and I sort of tuned out after the doctor mentioned “120 percent”…Ok, that sounds pretty good to me.  We were just so delighted he was able to do the test this time!  They are brilliant to make it into a game of blowing out candles!

The last time we dealt with these numbers were when we put him in “the box” for his Infant Pulmonary Lung Function test.  We tried that contraption a couple of times when he was a baby, and gave up on that thing and the numbers for awhile.  I can barely even type about “the box” without having a rash of emotions because it was such a horrible experience.  So, we are so so so thankful Asher can finally do his PFT’s, and we can really get a good sense of how his lungs are doing!

Asher keeps growing at a great pace, and we’re so thankful!  He’s 36.7 lbs, and 40.6″.  His dietitian was hoping that he would be 38 lbs by now, so of course we left there with another charge to pack on the calories, but overall he is doing great with his growth.

We did leave there with a new drug added to Asher’s regime, and unfortunately this is a “forever” drug.  It’s an antibiotic called Azithromycin, which is pretty common in the CF world.  Our doctor said that we don’t want to ignore the fact that Asher is again culturing for Pseudomonas.  So he thought it would be a good idea to add this drug to help Asher with inflammation, and hopefully aid in the effectiveness of the antibiotic Tobi that he’s already on.  Our doctor said that we should do a back to back round of Tobi with Asher too, so we’re hoping we’re not giving this Pseudo crap a chance to colonize in his lungs.  Thankfully Azithromycin is a pill that Asher will take 3 times a week, and it doesn’t add to his treatment time.  A pill.  Piece of cake.  This kid chucks hand fulls of pills down his throat all the time.  So we’re praying for negative cultures over here!!!