Does Trikafta Make Having a Cold Any Easier?

When Trikafta was released almost a year and a half ago, a slew of people started recording how quickly they got over a seasonal cold with the help of this new medication.

Typically, colds and viruses can be a slippery slope for someone with CF. What is usually a few days of minor inconveniences such as a stuffy nose and sore throat for your average person can lead to a serious lung function drop, hospital stay, and a course of IV antibiotics for someone with CF. However, anecdotally, Trikafta seemed to lessen the impact a cold had on the poor sick soul. People said lungs didn’t take a hit and they felt better sooner with its help.

Would that be the case in the event of my first cold? Due to the pandemic, we would have to wait and see!

Cold-free thanks to COVID-19

Just as Trikafta was released to the public and people with CF had prescriptions in their hands, our world suddenly faced a global pandemic. Forced into isolation, we didn’t really get to stretch our new Trikafta-lungs and test their capabilities. I know that was a disappointment for a lot of people who finally felt “better” but were unable to live as if they were better.

Inadvertently, the benefit of sheltering at home was there just weren’t any colds to catch, except the one no one wanted, i.e. COVID-19. So although I heard people were getting over their colds easier with the power of Trikafta, our household managed to go the entire year of 2020 without getting sick with a cold or virus. We would have to wait (happily) to test this theory out.

A cold strikes our house

Just a few weeks ago, I felt the alarming start of a scratchy throat and runny nose, telltale signs you are getting sick. My son happened to be under the weather so I knew what was coming. "Here we go," I thought. This cold happened to occur at a very unfortunate time as I was one week into a course of IV antibiotics to treat a lung infection AND going on 15 weeks pregnant.

However, unlike my son and husband who were fine after a day of rest, this particular cold knocked me down flat. My chills, congestion, productive cough, hemoptysis, fatigue, and loss of appetite were just the beginning of symptoms. After getting tested for COVID and the flu, even though I am vaccinated for both, we settled on a diagnosis of just a nasty virus. In the end, two weeks went by before I felt semi-normal and recover from the bout of sickness with 10% less lung function than when I started IVs.

Did Trikafta help my cold?

In my experience, Trikafta didn’t have an obvious impact on the severity of my cold or the amount of time it took me to feel better. In fact, I was a little disappointed how sick I got I didn’t experience that magical cold healing power of Trikafta like so many people with CF have talked about. However, maybe because I was pregnant and on IVs at the time, that exacerbated the severity of the cold? Maybe it was just a particularly nasty strain of virus?

There are many factors that could have made this particular cold pretty terrible that were out of my control and not in the norm. Possibly, Trikafta did have some sort of positive effect and, without it, I would have been hospitalized. I’ll never know what kind of influence Trikafta had on this particular sickness. I do know my first cold while taking Trikafta was just that - a terrible and annoying series of unfortunate events.

Have you noticed a difference in dealing with a cold while taking Trikafta? Share your experience below!