I have an incentive spirometer at home. I confess, I stole it. Last March, when I finally asked for someone to write me for Levaquin to get rid of the worst of the last bad cough that lasted a few months....I nicked it out of the closet. We have had the same eight incentive spirometers in our store room at the clinic since I started. There is actual dust on the plastic covers. (To me: Dust on a pile of incentive spirometers is a snapshot of What Is Wrong With Pulmonary Clinic, which, yes, is in no small part my problem to fix.) Now we have six of them. (I had a good excuse to force one on a patient one day.)
I love incentive spirometers (IS). When I worked the bedside, I was sort of a religious zealot about them. It's a plastic thingy that forces you to take slow, deep breaths, which is a good idea. I think they're cheapest, most under-utilized therapy we have for keeping people well. Yes, we need inhalers and steroids and antibiotics and bronchoscopies and chest tubes and oscillators and everything else. But. It's kinda like my previous rant about soup. Soup is good.
I love incentive spirometers (IS). When I worked the bedside, I was sort of a religious zealot about them. It's a plastic thingy that forces you to take slow, deep breaths, which is a good idea. I think they're cheapest, most under-utilized therapy we have for keeping people well. Yes, we need inhalers and steroids and antibiotics and bronchoscopies and chest tubes and oscillators and everything else. But. It's kinda like my previous rant about soup. Soup is good.
There's a different plastic thingy called a flutter valve, or an acapaella, or a "pickle." It does something slightly different than the IS, because it adds a bit of resistance to your exhalation...expiratory pressure. This opens up your lungs a bit, forces them to work slightly harder, opens up airway passages that don't feel like opening...and has this vibrating feeling thing to loosen up crap in your lungs, so you can get it out.
I ordered one on amazon a week ago, and it arrived today. And I love it.
It's the best damned thing ever.
Even if you were to tell me that I'm completely fine right now, and when the prednisone is done (it isn't yet), I will be magically not coughing from anything....I still love this thing.
At first I felt like I was coughing up cat hair. (And maybe I was.) (It's not impossible that, per Dr. J, my PFTs "are still not what they should be, even given your defect" because there's this massive Bella-and-Beau colored hairball under my heart....admittedly it's not terribly likely.) (It could be a alien growth, as well, but....the odds don't favor that, either.)
But this goofy plastic thing makes my lungs feel better. Seems worth doing. When I go to Mayo, they will probably give me one or the other of these. Everybody who's been through a surgery can benefit from them. Maybe I'll ask the girls at the front desk to bling mine up for me.
No, I haven't ordered my brace yet. I've got to measure for it. It depresses me to think about measuring for it; I'll get over it. She explicitly told me to get that prior to surgery. I'll do it this weekend.
I was reminded today when I came home and got the bills. Roughly $500 worth, most of which related to the test, not the read (i.e. the MD bill). I still haven't got the actual results from the CPET yet, either. I stuck the bills in my bag to remind me to call tomorrow....it's been a month since my first request for the test. They have it; they just forgot I asked for it. I want to look at it, and I know I want to pick some other brains about it.
Just happy about my dumb new toy.
I ordered one on amazon a week ago, and it arrived today. And I love it.
It's the best damned thing ever.
Even if you were to tell me that I'm completely fine right now, and when the prednisone is done (it isn't yet), I will be magically not coughing from anything....I still love this thing.
At first I felt like I was coughing up cat hair. (And maybe I was.) (It's not impossible that, per Dr. J, my PFTs "are still not what they should be, even given your defect" because there's this massive Bella-and-Beau colored hairball under my heart....admittedly it's not terribly likely.) (It could be a alien growth, as well, but....the odds don't favor that, either.)
But this goofy plastic thing makes my lungs feel better. Seems worth doing. When I go to Mayo, they will probably give me one or the other of these. Everybody who's been through a surgery can benefit from them. Maybe I'll ask the girls at the front desk to bling mine up for me.
No, I haven't ordered my brace yet. I've got to measure for it. It depresses me to think about measuring for it; I'll get over it. She explicitly told me to get that prior to surgery. I'll do it this weekend.
I was reminded today when I came home and got the bills. Roughly $500 worth, most of which related to the test, not the read (i.e. the MD bill). I still haven't got the actual results from the CPET yet, either. I stuck the bills in my bag to remind me to call tomorrow....it's been a month since my first request for the test. They have it; they just forgot I asked for it. I want to look at it, and I know I want to pick some other brains about it.
Just happy about my dumb new toy.