So I've been home now for 3 weeks. This experience should be comfortably behind me, a part of my past. Why, then, do I find that I am still caught in the complex web of healthcare?
Well, for one thing I still have a hole in my throat with a tube (trache) sticking through it. Every morning I am reminded that I have to clean around the tube, change the dressing, and put in a new inner lining in the tube. I have to cap off the tube to prevent water coming in while showering and cap it with a different cap in order to speak without plugging the ceiling hole. I worry that the stiff tube will take on water somehow and I could become waterlogged.
Another insult to my body is the G-tube sticking out of my stomach. Just like the trache, this bummer tube reminds me that this is my third try to get it right trying to swallow. If I begin to have breathing problems again, I will need to receive nourishment by g-tube or n-g tube. Since I have already removed two G-tubes and more than 1 nasal gastro tube, my personal care physician is reluctant to remove this current structure.
My diet, while recently expanded to include almost everything I care to eat, is still restricted. I'm to eat mostly soft foods and food with uniform consistency which makes it is easier to swallow. Of course in addition to the precautions I take when I shower I have to watch how I change my clothes that I don't mess up the wounds. Swimming is out of the question.
And how long does this all last? Could be days, weeks, years. The double hospitalization makes everyone a bit nervous. If Dr. A says it should be okay to pull everything out and call me cured, and things go bad again, Dr. A will feel a personal loss of status. One or two doctors have used "end of the month" in their reports making me think that was a sort of "out of the air" projection made in one of their case management meetings. Whatever the magic date is, I don't have much of a choice but to wait and do all my exercises
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