Adapting leasure to the trach and ventilator patient!

Well, It's another wonderful morning here in my house.

Mom and Dad are watching TV.

I slept well last night only having to suction a couple of times.

You know, lately with my massive increase in my massive interest in classical music, and with the way that some pieces make me feel like I'm swinging, for example, the 2nd movement of the  Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," I've been thinking.

For somebody like me who uses a ventilator, I wonder how one with a trach and a vent, who's connected to the ventilator would swing if they wanted to.

I've come up with a couple of ideas.

One is that somebody would have to stand very close to the swing with the ventilator so that when the person was swinging the ventilator circuit would not get wripped off thus possibly also resulting in a very painful decannulation, or removal of the trach tube.

And in this process this would have to be done carefully with the person who is holding the ventilator standing off toward the side, close enough, yet not too close so that the result is the ventilator holder ends up getting kicked.

That would be horrible.

Another idea would be to put a very special and very very SECURE ventilator mount on the swing somehow so that the patient and ventilator could both swing and so that the ventilator would not go flying when the person startes swinging.

This ventilator mount would have to be secure so that the ventilator is held securely, otherwise we might have a ventilator turned into a projectile which would be dangerous for anybody standing around the ventilator and horrific for the person who's on the ventilator because they might end up becoming disconnected from the vent and possibly decannulated.

We must also not forget the patient who also uses oxygen that is being bled into the ventilator.

So now  we would have to have a tank mount along with that ventilator's mount and not only that, the tank isfull of gas, and these tanks can explode and I've heard they're like a bomb when they do explode, so this tank mount would have to be very very very very tightly secured so that when the patient was swinging, the tank would not go flying out.

Not only that, but we would need to prevent the tank from bumping against things when the swing was in motion, which could be easy to do.



The next idea would be to invent a swing that's specifically designed for the vent patient.

This would include a ventilator mount, a circuit support mechanism, and a very very secure oxygen tank holder where the oxygen tank gets strapped in very tightly to not only allow access,but also to prevent an oxygen tank from being turned into  a projectile.

I've had an interesting amount of thought about this, especially over the last month.

Some might just say, "Can't swing on a vent," but you know if there's a way to adapt something so that a person on the ventilator can enjoy it as much as a person not on the support of a ventilator, than let's work to adapt that to the best of our ability, and to adapt it in a fun, and a very safe way.



So those are my ideas for  a swinging ventilator patient.

I love thinking of  unconventional ideas like this, and unconventional situations such as this one.

It's just like being in a pool with a trach and a ventilator.

I think there could be some way to wrig up a ventilator support mechanism so that the circuit could be held outside of the water and so that it would not get pulled on.

We must be careful not to get water around the stoma though.

For patients just sitting in the pool not really intending to swim, a motorized lift could be used to hoist the patient down into, and up out of the water, similar to what happens with the Hubbard tank.

If a patient was going to swim,  I think a special device could be used so that the patient could swim along  side of the pool and there could be somebody standing beside the pool out of the water holding the ventilator and maybe something to keep the circuit from getting into the water.

Patients with external PEEP valves such as you might find on the LTV 900s, and 950s would really have to be observed carefully and the circuit with the PEEP valve would need to be held out of the water either manually, or with a supporting arm, and this is also true with the patient who's on ventilators with Internal PEEP such as  my ventilator which is the LTV 1150 ventilator.

If some of the tubing did hit the water it might not be that big of an ordeal, but the Exhalation valves MUST be kept out of the water.

If these valves get soaked you're going to get DISC/SENSE alarms and then you have a pain of a job trying to get the water out of these things and of course with pool water, if that were to happen, you simply change out the circuit because the pool water has other chemicals inside of it.

Of course if it were me, even with Bath water, if water got into the valve, I'd change the circuit, because, umm unintentional water in any part of the circuit, even if it is removed, if you ask me, makes a circuit unsafe for anybody to use!

I know I'm droning on quite a bit, but I've payed considerable amounts of thought to stuff like this lately.

Really for years, but now that I have my trach, really I pay much more amounts of thought to this.

I hope you have enjoyed reading, or listening to this post.

May God Bless You and Keep you.

Remember, ONLY HE, Can Love You Perfectly!