Let's talk about oxygen therapy!

Background

When I came out of sedation at the University of Virginia Transitional Care Hospital I was on high flow oxygen. If my mask came off or there was a problem in delivery, I would die in 10 minutes or so. As I progressed, my need was reduced and I am currently on 2 liters of oxygen most of the time. Four liters to do exercise. I can sit around some, without it on. Right now I am reducing my prednisone and that's causing me to need more oxygen and spend les time without. Hopefully, once I finish the prednisone reduction I can start building up my lung capacity again. At this point I know that, even if my oxygen failed I can live by just sitting still and doing recue breathing till help arrives.

How oxygen therapy works

While in the hospital, they have a network of pipes that route oxygen to all the rooms. Most room have multiple outlets. When moving around for x-rays or tests, they would hook up a bottle on the gurney to get to and from the different areas. Each area generally had it's own wall mounted oxygen device. I was on a ventilator when I arrived at UVa and had a Trache . This is an implant in your throat that you breath through, the oxygen mask goes over your throat and you breath through the device. Also I had a feeding tube but I'll address that in a future post. Once you get out of the hospital, they provide you with a machine for your house and give you a long tube so you can walk around. I liken that to Jacob Marley pulling the chains as I walk around. The damn things catch on everything and either come unhooked or jerk your head around. the company also brings you bottles and a little cart to pull the bottle around in. Very annoying! I ordered a scuba backpack from Amazon and asked for shorter tanks. The large ones are E tanks, half of that are D tanks, and half of D are C tanks which are quite manageable. I'm using mostly C tanks at this time. I keep a few E's for emergency's and use the D's in the car. We have an RV and purchased a separate machine for that since the one in the house is large and difficult to move. I'll post details about the RV hookup in a new post later. Insurance wouldn't cover that so we had to pay for it. There are small battery powered machines but I can't seem to get my doctor to prescribe one for me. They are very expensive.

Delivery Methods

Early on when I was in high flow, the oxygen was administered with a mask. There was also a bipap machine that they placed a tight mask and it helped me breathe. Once i didn't need very high flow, they switched me to cannulas. There's not enough instruction or information on cannulas out there so let me enlighten you. Cannulas come in many shapes and sizes just like noses. They also come in various diameters, with different angles and thicknesses of the prongs that go in your nose. additionally, there are differences in how far apart the prongs are. What does that mean? Well the folks at the oxygen place have a generic set of cannulas they give out. After trying what the had to offer, I ordered a bunch of them on the internet to decide what I liked. A side note is that there are two methods of delivery, continuous and intermittent. In order for the intermittent machines to notice you are requesting oxygen by breathing in, you have to use a cannula with longer prongs. Of course, no one tells you that. I've found that if you using the cannulas heavily, you need to change to a different shape every couple of days to prevent chafing. Also Ayn makes a good saline cream and spray to help with nose redness. I also do a nose lavage everyday to keep the passage clear. This can help with allergy's and infections as well. If you are on a cannula and your nose is stopped up, that's a big problem.

Other concerns

Traveling brings a whole other set of problems. If you need to replace empty oxygen bottles, you have to call your provider and then they call ahead for you to pick up remotely. That works fine most of the time, but there can be issues with the location you are picking up at. We had some trouble getting the RV into places to restock. I can't really carry heavy bottles to far in my condition. Most of the oxygen folks are great though, and I enjoy stopping by to pick up refills. They will bring them to the house but we never know are schedule and elect to pick them up once a week at their location. We leave most of them in the car and RV since we have a machine with a long cord in the house.