Chance Meeting with a CF Mum

This morning I was on Facebook, as I am most mornings after breakfast and I read a post on one of the CF groups posted by a mum.  It caught my attention more so than many others as this mum was saying that her little one has in the past had Colimycin for a Pseudomonas infection which she received in both the USA and the UK but now in South Africa she couldn't get any because of it STILL not having been approved by the Medicines Control Council.  AHA, I thought to myself, I may be able to help here,so I quickly hovered over her name with my mouse to see where she is situated, and lo and behold, it is Pretoria....so I commented on her post and said I have some spare if she would like them,  It wasn't a minute later that I had an 'inbox' message from her asking where I lived.  I messaged back and likewise asked where she is. Well we are on opposite sides of the city, but no worries, wherever anyone goes here, one tends to have to travel great distances.  After giving her my GPS co-ordinates, she said she would get in her car and leave straight away, which left me sitting bolt upright and thinking, yikes I better do some tidying up - after all this isn't just any visitor, this is a CF MUM!!!!!!  Calculating I probably had about 40 minutes before she arrived  I summed up in a split second what I needed to do to make the place look anywhere near acceptable and got cracking.  Out came the vacuum cleaner to whip over the carpets, the bucket and mop to clean the kitchen, bathroom and toilet floors and every surface I could see was Domestos'd and disinfected...all things I was going to do once I had rested from my early morning stint and caught up on Facebook.

As it turned out, I had quite a bit longer than anticipated to get things under control - lol - as she frantically called me after her GPS had sent her to a very remote area near Soshanguve.  Not knowing the township area at all left me a bit perplexed for a second, trying to give her advise as to how she should travel to get onto a road that would eventually bring her to me.  With us not being on Google maps nor any other map for that matter we had to find a point that would get her going in the right direction.  Finally we hit on Grootvlei Garage, which is not too far from us and is a point that IS on Google maps.  She said she would phone me as she got closer, so I waited for her call.  Eventually, she did arrive here - after about two and a half hours!!!!!!

We spent the next two hours together discussing CF health care in the USA, the UK and South Africa.  She has had a bit of a shock to say the least and apparently fired the doctor she was recommended after just one visit.  I have often read the comments and posts of those from the rest of the world on these groups and thought to myself, how I wish we had access to the things that they do, or how nice it would be for so much care to be given from health care officials and hospitals, as is so often described and then depicted in my mind.  Yet, strangely enough I found myself defending South Africa.  Without even giving further thought I told her about what we personally have experienced and how we have moved on.  In defense of our state hospitals I told her how difficult it is for our CF doctors to gain the best that they can for their patients.  NiQi, and Mark have been blessed with excellent, caring, well educated in CF, doctors and physiotherapists and without a shadow of a doubt I can say that they have received the best.  Going even further, I think of the survival rate in South Africa of our CF's and I think it is more than comparable with the rest of the world...after all NiQi is now 24 and some of the other CF patients that we know of are even older than she is.  So even if Colimycin hasn't YET been approved by the Medicines Control Council, at least as a state patient it is available and because of that I was able to help a fellow CF mum out today with some of this 'gold dust' that she desperately needs to keep her son healthy.....and that, as some would say, is how we roll...