You Lost Your What!?
As much as I disliked my trach tube, I
realized that it would keep me alive should my wind pipe decide to again
tighten up and reduce my available air intake as it did the first of this
year. So it was a sort of love/hate
relationship. And because the tube was
there day after day, sun or rain, day or night, I began to take it for granted. Oh, I paid close attention to it every
morning after my shower to see that it was clean and that the collar holding it
in place was snugly secured. But the rest of the day I didn’t think about it so
much.
Which is why I was so surprised and
distressed when while driving to a chiropractor’s office yesterday afternoon, I
felt something unexpectedly bounce against my chest. I touched it with my hand, then took several
seconds to realize that it was my trach tube. M tube had fallen out of its hole
and was being held loosely by the other end of the collar. I pulled to the side of the road and made a
sincere effort to reinsert the tube. But
without lubrication and a decent look at the site, it was an impossible
task. Besides, I was under no stress or
breathing anxiety. When I got back home
and called my doctor’s office his nurse advised that I should sit back and
relax. She would notify the doctor, I called Carolyn.
Carolyn called the doctor’s office with
a little more urgency in her voice. She
convinced the doctor to see me and
assess the situation. We rushed over to his
office about 3.5 miles away. The doctor
pushed a fiber-optic scope into my nasal cavity and down my throat. He verified that my pharyngeal opening was
larger than the (now absent) tube.
There was really no need to replace the tube as long as I wasn’t in
distress. We were exactly 2 weeks early from seeing the doctor about taking the
trach out anyway.
The
next 24 hours were a little nerve wracking as I got to find out what it was
like to breathe just with our usual equipment. But all is well (deep sigh).
