You Lost Your What!?

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).