Because crawling is for losers:

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To tell the story of Finn’s first Christmas – and our first Christmas with Finn – we have to go back to late July. You may recall that Finn was taken into hospital around then with a suspected case of meningitis. Thankfully it turned out to be a ’simple’ viral infection; he was treated with antibiotics and kept in for a week before being discharged.

Over the course of that week, however, an X-ray and a CT scan revealed that he also had a chest infection. The antibiotics were broad-spectrum and should have put paid to his chest malady; a second chest X-ray around the time of his six-week check-up revealed that the infection was lingering so he was treated with another round of antibiotics. Thankfully there was no hospital stay this time around but we did have to bring him for a third X-ray in December.

When the chest infection was still present in this latest X-ray, Finn’s consultant put him on a stronger dose of antibiotics and requested that we bring him back for a CT scan so that she and the consultant radiologist could take a closer look at his lungs. At this point Áine and I were understandably concerned – after all, a chest infection that has been around for four or five months can’t be a good thing, right? Part of me was thinking that most kids aren’t X-rayed as often as Finn and that under normal circumstances the infection could be there for weeks before it becomes a problem but another part of me wasn’t having any of it.

But then the consultant said something that completely threw Áine and I into a whirl: she said that she wanted to bring Finn back for a sweat test in early January to rule out Cystic Fibrosis.

It’s hard to explain the emotions that Áine and I experienced after that moment. On the one hand the rational part of your mind is thinking that even with the higher-than-average incidence of CF in Ireland, the chances of Finn having it were slim – in most countries it affects 1 in 2000 people. We busied ourselves running the words the consultant used through our minds over and over, examining their potential meaning, looking at them from every possible angle and imagining every conceivable inflection.

‘Rule out’. When someone uses that phrase they typically mean that they have already excluded the thing that they are testing for and are merely going through the motions, to check a box or cover their arses in the event that they’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion. But when the thing that they’re ruling out is Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that will fundamentally change your child’s life – and your own – it’s not as easy to consider the typical usage case of a throwaway expression.

Because let’s be honest: no matter how pragmatic you are, how rationally or logically you examine a situation, ultimately your human nature will win out and you’ll fall back on your emotional response. By nature all people are pessimists and the only factor is the degree of that pessimism. It’s a survival thing; expect the worst and you’ll always be prepared. Bonus: the best-case scenario will always be a pleasant surprise.

The weeks that followed were an emotional roller-coaster; as I’ve mentioned, you vacillate between absolute conviction that Finn isn’t that 2000th person and resignation to the fact that somebody has to be that poor person so why not Finn? There was also the thought that we would have to wait until early January before we would find out whether or not he was afflicted. It’s not fun and the idea that you’ll be spending Christmas with this hanging over you is a sure-fire way to dampen any holiday spirit that you might have. The last thing on your mind is carols or shopping or merriment.

Áine and I couldn’t live with this hanging over us so we started to pester the Doctors, trying to find out what their motivation for the test was – were they simply ticking a box or was there something more to it? Would it be possible to get an early appointment for the sweat test and the CT scan if we were to go private? Eventually our constant calling paid off – both the sweat test and the scan were brought forward, to the week before Christmas. Our waiting time was days now, instead of weeks, but it did little to ease our minds; in some respects it probably just heightened our expectation, the immediacy making everything far more more palpable.

When the sweat test finally rolled around it was almost mundane in its simplicity; two electrodes were attached to Finn’s arm and a very low current passed between them for two minutes. This stimulates the sweat glands in the area of his arm between the two electrodes, which are then removed and a small collection device strapped in their place. Thirty minutes later we returned to the test room and the sweat sample was removed to be examined. Astonishingly, the doctor who was conducting the test told us that some people hadn’t bothered their arses turning up for their appointments. Áine and I couldn’t believe it given the rigmarole we had trying to get an earlier one.

The test results are available within 24 hours but the hospital only contacts you if the results are abnormal; Áine and I weren’t prepared to wait for someone to not call so the next day I rang to find out. The consultant and her team weren’t available to speak on the phone for most of it but eventually I got a call back from the consultant’s secretary: the results were normal (a person afflicted with CF will never test normal). I actually had to sit down, the relief was so intense.

Of course, we still had the CT scan to get out of the way but it almost didn’t matter: the worst-case scenario had been eliminated and this persistent chest infection had turned out to be exactly that. Nothing more and nothing less and having reviewed the scan our consultant was happy that Finn’s immune system – buoyed by yet more antibiotics – was fighting the infection.

Following all of that drama, I’m delighted to say that Christmas itself was positively hum-drum and run of the mill. It sounds like something from a terrible Hollywood Holiday flick but Áine and I had already received the best present we could hope for so anything beyond that was just gravy.

We brought Finn to see Santa and he roared. Santa came to our house the Sunday before Christmas during a party we threw for the kids and Finn roared. Santa came to our house on Christmas Eve but Finn was in bed so he didn’t even know until he came down the next morning and saw his pressies under the tree.