Healthcare — Page 11

First Night With an AutoPAP Machine for Apnea

December 3, 2010

The age of AutoPAP is here. They concluded from my sleep study at the hospital that I have a mild case of both obstructive and central apnea (7 and 4 episodes, respectively) and enough desaturation events to warrant an equipment therapy.

Enter the Philips Respironics System One AutoPAP machine: a heated, humidified, auto-adjusting variable pressure CPAP. CPAP is a misnomer, since nothing about it is constant outside of its pattern while I’m not in need of assistance. It has a range of 4-20 cm of water, but we have it set at 4 cm for inhalation and it steps down to 1 cm as I exhale so it’s more comfortable. The pressure adjusts when it senses an apnea event occurs, both the exhale and inhale pressures.

My initial impressions

I was taken aback at its size when the tech came to demo it. Many bread loaves are larger, and 1/2 of it can detach so you can leave the humidifier at home if traveling and can tolerate cold, dry air. [Read more…]

Fatboy: 2 – Cold Virus: 1

November 29, 2010

Fatboy spent Black Friday, Happy Saturday, and Hooky Sunday on the couch and floor. Sick with the cold virus. Beautiful and I both had dry, cracking throats leaving her parents’ house Thursday night after food and fun, but colds certainly start days before, so we must have been exposed to something together Monday or Tuesday.

I went from being perfectly clear in the lungs and sinuses to being a freaky, slimy, smelly mess by Saturday morning. You know the sick, snot smell that oozes out of your pores with a bad cold. That was me. I was running a temperature Sunday that got me popping Tylenol Cold caplets every 4 hours. I called clinic’s on-call number around 6pm at Sue’s insistence and they told me to come in today at lunch.

I cut my hair and Beautiful accessed my port this morning (another stellar job, Babe!) because no one in their right mind enjoys having a hastily-placed, iodine-prepped dressing that includes a 3/4″ needle in a 1/2″ port when one’s wife is perfectly and superiorly capable of doing it properly.

[Read more…]

Annual CF Clinic Visit 2010

November 12, 2010

Today was my annual clinic visit. Not the dreaded annual, but it was not my favorite day, until just about half an hour ago when I found joy despite the bad or discouraging things of the day. I have to preface this with acknowledgment that Sue (my coordinator) told me that I wasn’t allowed to blog about today while I was still sad or upset about the visit. Now that I’ve found my joy, I’ll start writing – you know I’ll still be transparent with you about all of my ups and downs, though. Just know that I still will go to bed a very happy man despite CF and despite some things that made me feel less of myself.

What the annual involves

At the Tampa CF Center at TGH, the annual visit includes a full blood workup, urinalysis, sputum, PFT, doctor consult, dietician, social worker, and chest x-rays. They drew 9 vials of blood in the time it takes me to donate a pint – a hilarious 2 minutes to me. Next is the standard PFT that I showed from my last clinic visit. Then I went to radiology in the main hospital for my x-rays and hoofed it back as soon as I could (about 20 minutes later) for what is usually the doctor. He was running late because they were a doctor down and I got the impression that there was a recent transplant that he was attending to. I got to see the social worker before the doctor, but then it was him (head of pulmonolgy), the dietician, a surprise test, and then a second consult, and off to my next thing. I got there a tad before 7am and was out at 11am, but I’m usually out by 8:30 when both doctors are there and it’s not an annual.

Not a happy camper

My day pretty much started out bad with my PFT results. [Read more…]

Philips Respironics MiniElite Compressor Review

October 22, 2010

Philips Respironics sent me a MiniElite unit with a SideStream Plus handset and slim lithium ion battery to test and give my expert review as a user of nebulizers for over 30 years, so I put it through its paces and have come to a conclusion about their product.

Description

My first impression of the MiniElite was amazement over how small it is. It’s about twice the size of an aquarium air pump! If I had this when I was in high school doing nebs on the way to golf practice and tournaments, it would have made life SO much easier. We used to have a DC to AC converter to plug in our 10lb compressor and then a dose took 20-30 minutes. I hated having CF every day of the week back then.

Imagine having a 1.4lb compressor with an optional thin lithium-ion battery that snaps to the bottom of it for use in the car or out anywhere you can’t get to an AC or DC outlet. It also comes with a carrying case that is smaller than my overnight toiletry bag and the base unit has a neb cut-out to stand the nebulizer up so the mouthpiece isn’t laying down on a dirty surface after use. Pretty impressive design.
[Read more…]