Living Life on a Home Mechanical Ventilator! (The Daily Life Of A Ventilator Patient!

   Good afternoon everybody!!! We're coming to the end of 2023, and we're about to enter 2024! What's Your New Year's resolution? I'll tell you what mine is!!! You see, I'm too nice to people.  I'm not the kind of person who really yells at people, or causes problems to get what he needs. Well, sometimes you have to be a problem to get rid of a problem. Sometimes you have to be a squeaky wheel to get the greese. Here's the thing! I have very severe acid reflux. I've been on many medications to try to solve the reflux, and nothing does anything to help! I've had tests including a probe they put into my esophagus, to record the PH Level, which ended up being a horrible nightmare. Oh yeah, and by the way, those results that the probe got, WERE HORRIBLE!!! I had an Upper GI that showed reflux. I've had an endoscopy, and esophageal manometry testing, and It wasn't all that good! I've had a gastric emptying evaluation which wasn't good ...

 Well, I have great news! So, Long story short, I have a medical grade air mattress. Does it do lateral Rotation? No! Does it have True Low Air Loss? No! Does it have a Blower? No! It's a Medline A20 Alternating Pressure Mattress. Nothing fancy. It has a pump with two big hoses that go to my air mattress. It has a Low Pressure Alarm. It has a dial to adjust the firmness, and a switch to select either alternating, or Static mode. That's it! But I have an air mattress, and It's comfortable! VERY comfortable! That's what mattres. If I end up being in serious of Lateral Rotation, well that's when I' will end up in the hospital, and of course the Stryker InTouch beds do lateral Rotation. Other than that, Not happenin. But I don't really care.    The point is, I got my Alternating Pressure Air mattress, and I'm very thankful for that!  We're not working on getting the setting for firmness and softness adjusted correctly, and that's going to take a whil...

    Well, my Dr. FINALLY got around to getting in the script for the medical grade air mattress!! He FINALLY got script in, and now we just have to wait to see what my lovely medical insurance will do with the script.  As I have said many times before, Medical insurance doesn't usually pay for those unless you get a pressure ulcer, and you're already in trouble!!! Once that happens, then they'll think about possibly covering a medical grade air mattress! Until then, you're on your own. But we can always hope for the best right? Hahahahaha! Don't you just love America Healthcare? I DO!!!! They'll see you through, and you'll be just fine! ((NOT))!!!!!! Notice my Sarcasm?     In other words, you know that nursing website I told you about last week on this blog? Allnurses? Well, I wanted to see if I could get some support being that I have a whole lot of medical experience with the medical field, and am very familiar with the medical field. They're not going...

   Well, Here's an update on the whole air mattress ordeal! So, I called my Dr.'s office yesterday, to see if the Dr. had sent the script in for the medical grade air mattress, and the script hasnhad not even been sent into my DME. The Dr. has been so busy with things, that he had just not had time to do this. Well today, my Mom called the Dr. because I'd called several times, and they said that they're working on the mattress. I don't know what that means, but I HOPE, that they are getting the script in, so that we can see if lovely Medical insurance is going to pay for it. I sincerely hope so, because the little pad with a pump, isn't the best for long term use patients. I would call that something you'd use for a short term hospice patient who's passing soon, and who's not going to be on the air mattress for a long period of time.    In this case, It's a comfortable pad, It'll help reduce the risk of the hospice patient getting pressure ul...

 OK, so we have a quetion that I'm starting to raise. I'll explain to you what that question is, and why I'm asking it?    So, a few weeks ago, I requested my pulmonologist to write a script for a new pulse Oximeter. SPECIFICALLY Nellcor brand. My Nellcor Puritan Bennett N-600 X Oximeter that I bought a few years ago is now giving out. My DME gave me a Masimo RAD 8 oximeter, but I never really liked that oximeter. It had LEDs, instead of an LCD display. It didn't have that many nice features. The probes suck on the Masimo oximeters. The alarm isn't that loud. It's just not my definition of a good pulse ox. So what did I do? I bought a well known good pulse oximeter by Nellcor Puritan Bennett, and It worked from 2020 to 2023 which is fairly decent. But now it's giving out.    So a few weeks ago I told my Dr. to write a script for a new Nellcor oximeter. They got it to my DME, and two weeks ago, I asked Becky my Respiratory Therapist about it, and she said she...

So, today, has been rather uneventful. I went with my assistant Josh, to my sister's house to pay her a visit! We sat and talked for a while. I put my feet on her small foot massager, which has several balls that rotate while your feet sit on the massager. The massager has heat too, and when you turn the heat on, the balls glow red, with LEDs in them.     In other words, there's this website called allnurses for nurses, and even some Non-Medical professionals have posted on this website. I joined it many years ago, I believe in 2015, but maybe before that.  But I decided to introduce myself. I had posted with some questions in the past, sometime in 2015, but a lot of them were not very friendly when I posted. Anyhow, I decided to give a good introduction, and talked about why I had joined allnurses, and I thought that I'd post what I said there. It's below! (The following post is very long, but what I have to say, is important, and even though I am not a nurse, I hav...