My father has ALS and has been on a trach ventilator for about two months
now. Two issues have come up that I thought I'd ask about.
One is that he has had a trach change and it resulted in his trach area
being very sore for about 2 weeks--painful even with the minor jostling to
connect and disconnect from the trach circuit. After about 10 days he went
on antibiotics (on the assumption by his doc that it was an infection) and
the pain subsided in a few days. We are hoping this will not be a recurring
problem. Has anyone had similar problems--is some pain after a trach change
normal? Does it lessen after a few trach changes?
The second issue is that my Dad aspirates food readily so he has been told
to not eat my mouth (he has a food tube). What he has found gives him
satisfation is to drink something (e.g. wine) and spit it out without
swallowing (cuff up). He has also tried this with solid foods like muffins.
Does anyone else do this? Have you experienced any adverse effects? I think
he is at a slight increased chance for pnumonia, if anything is getting
down his trachea. Anyone with experience here?
Thank you very much for any words of wisdom.
Michael May
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Michael May
Department of Geography
University of California, Berkeley
mmay(AT)uclink2.berkeley.edu