When Emily is healthy her staph just kind of hangs out and behaves itself for the most part. She's cultured it since her dx. When she's sick, though, she's really sick, and generally for a long time. I can pinpoint a couple major illnesses with secondary infections attributed to her staph that have resulted in permanent changes to her baseline symptoms. So yeah- it has indirectly caused some damage, but how much is hard to quantify, since the inflammation factor is also huge for her and has caused changes in her baseline as well.
Emily's healthy pft's are also very good. Not as good as your daughter's- those numbers are fantastic!!!! but very good. They decline quite a lot when sick and addressing both infection and inflammation is needed to get those numbers back up.
Oh, and we only treat hers when she is sick. I generally agree with this premise. The oral meds are systemic and affect other body systems, like the gi tract, and I don't like the idea of constantly hitting them with powerful abx when not necessarily needed. Her staph is also now resistant to most oral abx and I'd rather save the ones we have left for when they are really needed.
Emily's healthy pft's are also very good. Not as good as your daughter's- those numbers are fantastic!!!! but very good. They decline quite a lot when sick and addressing both infection and inflammation is needed to get those numbers back up.
Oh, and we only treat hers when she is sick. I generally agree with this premise. The oral meds are systemic and affect other body systems, like the gi tract, and I don't like the idea of constantly hitting them with powerful abx when not necessarily needed. Her staph is also now resistant to most oral abx and I'd rather save the ones we have left for when they are really needed.