BiographyToni was born in January 2001 with no complications for the first 8 years of her life. In 2009 Toni started experiencing shortness of breath. We took her to the local GP who diagnosed her as asthmatic. For the next five years Toni had lots of chest infections, however the GP told us these were reactions to the inhalers, he kept upping her inhalers and giving her antibiotics.
In September 2014 she started to become excessively out of breath, we went back to the GP who yet again upped her inhaler and gave her antibiotics, this continued for the month of September.
By the middle of October, Toni was increasingly worse despite having one of the highest inhalers. For the next two weeks we were back and forth to the GP where we saw an actual GP, not asthma nurse. The GP sent us to the hospital for X rays, however we didn't have one as the hospital said it wad a reaction to the inhaler and gave us some throat spray to ease the reaction in her throat.
The next day Toni was extremely poorly, she couldn't breathe and couldn't walk 3 steps, therefore we took her back to the GP who requested to see X rays. Upon us telling him they were not done he was disgusted and sent us back to the hospital with a personal phone call demanding X rays to be done. Once we were at the hospital, Toni was put on oxygen, salbutamol nebuliser, fluids and IV antibiotics. We had everything thrown at us from tuberculosis to pneumonia to bronchitis.
She then spent a week at our local hospital and was diagnosed after being there for 5 days. The CF team from royal London were holding a clinic and popped in, they took one look at her and said they thought she had CF and wanted a sweat test done. The sweat test was positive and she was then transferred to the royal London where she spent a further six weeks under the CF specialist team where she learnt how to do her physio, all meds and daily treatment.
Today, for having CF, Toni is fairly well and has got used to her new daily routine with some nagging and daily help from me, her mum.
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