Just to be clear...this is not the normal way for aspergillus to infect CFers so I'm not trying to make anyone paranoid about growing it. I've cultured aspergillus a couple times before with no problem. I'm not allergic and my IgE levels are currently super low.
My FEV1 has been down since last spring despite nearly constant oral/iv antibiotics and some prednisone. If anything it has gone down more. We did a CT scan to look for atypical changes and, unfortunately, there appear to be some abscesses in my lower lobes. At the same time, aspergillus popped up on my cultures. So the current theory is that the antibiotics cleared out the MRSA that I always colonize and apparently the prednisone destroyed my immune system (which is really annoying since I was only on it for a couple weeks and never on a particularly high dose and it normally works wonders for me *grumble grumble*). At any rate, aspergillus had the opportunity to take over and start eating away at the tissue. My doc is wonderful but last I talked to him he was still kind of puzzled by my having this infection. Hopefully he'll have more for me when I see him in a couple weeks.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with an invasive aspergillus infection? Most of the stuff I find online relates to like cancer patients, etc. which, in the interest of not panicking needlessly, I have decided to take with a grain of salt. I'm on Vfend now and will take a blood test next week to see if the infection is systemic (which it had better not be). Hopefully someone here can give me some idea of what's coming up, like how long I might be on Vfend or if my FEV1 might go back up as the abscesses start healing. Thanks!
My FEV1 has been down since last spring despite nearly constant oral/iv antibiotics and some prednisone. If anything it has gone down more. We did a CT scan to look for atypical changes and, unfortunately, there appear to be some abscesses in my lower lobes. At the same time, aspergillus popped up on my cultures. So the current theory is that the antibiotics cleared out the MRSA that I always colonize and apparently the prednisone destroyed my immune system (which is really annoying since I was only on it for a couple weeks and never on a particularly high dose and it normally works wonders for me *grumble grumble*). At any rate, aspergillus had the opportunity to take over and start eating away at the tissue. My doc is wonderful but last I talked to him he was still kind of puzzled by my having this infection. Hopefully he'll have more for me when I see him in a couple weeks.
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with an invasive aspergillus infection? Most of the stuff I find online relates to like cancer patients, etc. which, in the interest of not panicking needlessly, I have decided to take with a grain of salt. I'm on Vfend now and will take a blood test next week to see if the infection is systemic (which it had better not be). Hopefully someone here can give me some idea of what's coming up, like how long I might be on Vfend or if my FEV1 might go back up as the abscesses start healing. Thanks!