No news is good news.

I don't like news. Cuz when I usually hear any, its bad. On our drive home from work Wednesday, Melisa's check engine light came on. I hate idiot lights. There are a million things that one little shining beacon can mean. So, we take it into the dealership the next morning to have it looked at. Before we left work yesterday, I asked Melisa if she had heard anything about her car. "Yes. Yikes. I'll tell you about it when you pick me up." Great. I pick her up and she says, "Well, two things. They said my catalytic converter is going out. It will cost around $800 to fix." I guess they had asked her if her car was running bad. Bad how? "When you go down the highway, does your car ever cut out or ever feel like you're pulling a trailer?" Uh, no. Its been fine. I think we'll pass on getting it fixed for now. I hate catalytic converters. They started putting those on cars in the mid-70's during the gas crisis. All that emissions bullshit. I'm for cleaner running cars but I'm not fan of sticking something else on a car that it doesn't technically need to run. Its another "something" that can go wrong. I just want to tear it out and run straight pipes on all the cars I get... with a muffler of course.

Now, for the "Number Two" thing. Let me preface this. A month ago, I took our daughter, Averly, to the doctor. She was coughing a lot and generally just not being as happy as she should. We figure its allergies/ ear infection. Well it was sort of. She had an x-ray done then and she had congestion in her left lung. They prescribed her on and anti-biotic for the infection and a steroid for her lungs. Along with a nebulizer so we could do breathing treatments with albuterol we she would be wheezing. Wow, isn't that the stuff asthmatics use? Huh. They said they were going to treat this like pneumonia but it really wasn't. OK? So, for 14 days everything went well and we took her back for her checkup and she got a clean bill of health. Well, two days later, she started coughing again. Melisa scheduled and took Averly to the doctor this time. Another x-ray. She had congestion in her left lung now. and a different anti-biotic and steroid this time. I guess they were saying it is pneumonia now. Now, don't get me wrong. Averly acts like she feels fine. Plays and laughs and we all have a grand old time. She just coughs a lot. She'll wake up maybe a couple times a night having a coughing fit. So, here we are on day three of the new prescriptions. Melisa gets a call yesterday from the doctor's office. Said they were scheduling a sweat chloride test. Did you look at the link yet? See what sticks out? Cystic fucking Fibrosis. The nurse said its just a precautionary measure because the pneumonia came back and switched to the other lung. Recurring Pneumonia they called it. Great. They didn't see any abnormalities in the x-rays and if it was a very big concern we would've been talking to the doctor directly and not the nurse. So, Averly is having this test done at the Children's Center at OU Health Science in OKC. She's not seeing a "specialist" or anything. They're just doing the test. We have no CF in our family history and we both had pneumonia at a early age. Not six months "early" but early enough. And Averly has no other symptoms of CF. But you can still imagine our concern just when those words pop up. Oh, and they better schedule this "test" before the end of the year. We've already met our deductible for this year. Wish us luck.