Compliance, Doctors, Exercise & Great Strides

First of all I want to say how excited I am that I hit 200 days of compliance with my Vest and nebs yesterday!! Of course the past month or so there have been a couple days where I've only done one treatment in a day, but that was because of my little bought of hemoptysis which I'm happy to say has been gone for a while now. I'm still counting those days as being complaint because I was following doctors orders!

Today has been pretty eventful so far and it's only 3:15. I had the day off work today due a teacher institute day, so I've been taking full advantage of it. I woke up at my usual time of 5:45 today because I had two appointments this morning beginning at 7:45. I got my treatments done, finished my '30 days of blogging' post, got dressed and headed out the door. I had to be at the local hospital at 7:45 to begin my oral glucose tolerance test at 8am. This is a two hour test that tests for diabetes. Patients with CF have a higher chance of getting Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes, so my doctor wants me to get checked annually to make sure that I'm not developing CFRD. This is the second time I've had this test done and I'm really not a fan! I had to fast for 12 hours and if you read my post about irritating things, you'll know that you shouldn't mess with my food schedule. I couldn't eat breakfast this morning before the test, so I wasn't a happy camper, but I survived.

Just looking at this is making my stomach turn.

First they make you give a urine sample to make sure there's no sugars in you, then they take your blood and make you drink the most disgusting "orange" flavored glucose drink. (Every time I burp, I still taste that nasty stuff!) Then an hour later they take my blood to test my blood sugar, and then after another hour they take my blood one more time; so that's three pricks in three hours. The last time I had this test done, I think they had to poke me about 7 or 8 times because they kept missing my veins and I was not happy! This time, the lady was awesome and only had to stick me three times. They should be faxing the results to my doctor this afternoon and we'll discuss the results at my next clinic appointment in the beginning of March.

My second appointment this morning was to get a bone density (Dexa) scan. I've had this test done a couple times in the past also and it's to make sure that I am not developing Osteoporosis or the milder form called Osteopenia. I think it's kind of like an x-ray, but there's no vest or anything that I had to wear. I just had to lay down on the table and the machine scaned my legs/hips - very easy. A few years ago when I had it done, the results showed that I had Ostepenia so my doctors put me on 2 calcium + D vitamins a day. I had the test performed in December 2010 and it showed that I had normal bone density! I didn't get the official results from today's test yet, but I took a peek at the technician's screen and it showed a little mark in the green area, so I think my bones are still going strong!

After I left the hospital I met with Michelle from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation who is in charge of the DeKalb Great Strides walk this year. We talked about the progress being made about local sponsors, donations and how many people/teams are signed up so far! Looks like we're doing great so far with everyone signing up, but now it's time to focus on bringing in those donations and getting some companies to donate/sponsor us for the walk. I'm really excited about the progress we're making, but there's still a lot to be done. I'm planning on going around the town on Monday to a couple different businesses to see if I can get some more sponsors and donations. Oh, and for those of you on Colleen's Friends & Family, the t-shirts arrived today in the mail, so I'll be getting those to all of you shortly. :-)

And because all of that wasn't enough, I decided to take advantage of the above-average temperatures today (about 50 degrees) and go for a run outside. I ran/walked the Great Strides route which is about three miles. It was harder and much windier outside than I thought it was going to be, but it still felt really good to get outside to run. It was also nice to run outside because I was able to cough and spit while running (sorry to be gross, but it's true). When I run in the gym, if I cough and bring up something, I usually just have to swallow it because I don't want to gross out the other people there. Running outside was excellent airway clearance and I think because I was running against the wind at some points, my lungs worked even harder than on a treadmill. I'm still going to keep running at the gym, but I'm going to try to keep increasing my outside running time each week, until it's warm enough to always be outside, to get myself ready for my first 5K. I've found a 5K in a local town that I want to sign up for that's June 16th - so I've got about four months to get my butt in gear!