Its a Thursday afternoon, Nick and I are calling each other as we are walking out the office door and heading to daycare. We meet in the daycare parking lot, buckle up and we are on our way to St Vincent hospital for our quarterly CF Check in.  All day yesterday, we were talking with Maddox that as soon as we were done with the CF appointment that Best Friend Ollie could come over and hang out! The drive up to Green Bay was the typical 2:00pm Thursday afternoon traffic of a steady pace and uneventful, my kind of I41 traffic. And then there is a little voice from the back seat, ‘do I have to do the mouth test again’?

Here’s the back story; every time we go to the CF clinic, we have to take a throat culture to see if there are any types of CF bacteria growing in his lungs. The back of the throat is where they  can also survive. It’s the same swab test like strep, only the results take a month to get back, which is nerve wracking to me. On the way to school this morning, Maddox knew we were talking about Dr Pete and the team and I brought up the test. He’s a smart kid, right? He instantly remembered it and he got mad at me, “I don’t want to do it”. I told him that every time we go to see Dr Pete for the rest of his life, he will always have this test, so let’s make this easy. I told him that Billie is a rock star and that test is SUPER quick. All you have to do is open your mouth and say Ah and it’ll be done. I  asked if we could practice (yes this is our conversations on the way to school, it’s about a 20 minute journey every day for us at least). I could see in my mirror he opened his mouth, I did a quick motion with my wrist and told him it was over. That was it. His response, ‘really’? Yup, that’s it. Let’s practice again and that was what we did the rest of the drive to school (mind you all I did was listen to him say AH, hoping he opened his mouth while I was driving safely).

We get to St Vincent hospital and sit down at the registration desk to the same friendly face we have sat down to for the past 3 years. We remember her and today she finally remembered us (she sees how many thousands of people, right?) Maddox turns on the charm and huge smile while we get checked in. We get lost on our way to the new CF wing of the hospital, but we finally arrive to the CF team desk. We walk in and Maddox says hi! Billie grabs his chart, we head to his designated room and right away we ask if we can start with the test. Billie asked, ‘you sure?’ (knowing in her head that this test is a true cry fest, hold Maddox down to get the swab). Maddox said ‘yup’! Opened his mouth, she swabbed, he coughed/gagged at the taste and that was it. NOT A TEAR! He grabbed his back pack, opened it up and started playing. We did it!

The rest of the appointment was super fast, we were able to up his dosage for his enzymes so he can start absorbing more with his growth. His lungs sounded clear and no one had any concerns, other than he needs to gain more weight. But he grew over an inch in 3 months – what a trooper for rocking through growing pains! It was such a laid back appointment that some of the therapists were playing cars and fishies with him in our downtime of the appointment.  Status quo until something changes. It was our quickest CF appointment ever, less than 2 hours. Completely unheard for us! Yea! Now we just have to send Halloween Costume pictures to the team 🙂

And to those keeping track at home, Best Friend Ollie did come over tonight!