Today was my annual clinic visit. Not the dreaded annual, but it was not my favorite day, until just about half an hour ago when I found joy despite the bad or discouraging things of the day. I have to preface this with acknowledgment that Sue (my coordinator) told me that I wasn’t allowed to blog about today while I was still sad or upset about the visit. Now that I’ve found my joy, I’ll start writing – you know I’ll still be transparent with you about all of my ups and downs, though. Just know that I still will go to bed a very happy man despite CF and despite some things that made me feel less of myself.

What the annual involves

At the Tampa CF Center at TGH, the annual visit includes a full blood workup, urinalysis, sputum, PFT, doctor consult, dietician, social worker, and chest x-rays. They drew 9 vials of blood in the time it takes me to donate a pint – a hilarious 2 minutes to me. Next is the standard PFT that I showed from my last clinic visit. Then I went to radiology in the main hospital for my x-rays and hoofed it back as soon as I could (about 20 minutes later) for what is usually the doctor. He was running late because they were a doctor down and I got the impression that there was a recent transplant that he was attending to. I got to see the social worker before the doctor, but then it was him (head of pulmonolgy), the dietician, a surprise test, and then a second consult, and off to my next thing. I got there a tad before 7am and was out at 11am, but I’m usually out by 8:30 when both doctors are there and it’s not an annual.

Not a happy camper

My day pretty much started out bad with my PFT results. [Read more…]