Then, you can be glad there isnt someone cute lying next to you. Yup, thats my tubing for my humidifier, which is still causing me great problems in the nose department, despite, thick layers of vaseline (Thanks for the tips) So anyway, heres the introduction to my machine. You have just seen the nose piece ,and this is the actual machine.
The clear tub, is what I fill with sterile water every night. It holds about 600mls, and depending on what flow it is set at, that will last between 4 and 8 hours. Each morning, when you shut the machine down, it goes through a dryer sequence taking all the moisture out of the tubing and killing any bugs with heat. I then have to clean out the tub with running water to make sure that is clean. And thats it, till I fill it up in the night. Though, once a week, I stick the tub in the dishwasher to give it a good clean, along with my nebbi pots. And then the whole system tub and tubes I have to change monthly.
When i turn it on, I have this little screen:
And from there, it tells me what it is doing, eg heating up of cleaning. I can also select the flow rate, depending if on how I am feeling. If I need a lot of moisture, the flow rate goes up high to about 50 L/m, but if I am not to bad, I can take it right down to 10 L/m.
So far it is working well, Instead of struggling to cough dry hard ick up, I have lots of lose stuff that moves easier. The nsoe thing is the only problem :/ But I may get some cotton out and have a go at adapting it.
As for how I am feeling? urgh still crap. Mum came home from work today and actully said, you like crap, like death warmed up. I then proceeded to sleep for 3 hours curled up in a corner, sleeping right through the phone ringing 3 times. I didnt sleep well last night as woke up in agony with my head, at least 3 times. So I was made to see a doctor today.
They have given me new migraine and headaches tablets and are running a load of bloods, cultures and x rays, to be on the safe side. Fun. Its jsut mega mega annoying, as I want to take my niece and nephew away this week, but I have to consider, is it a good idea to be any distance from home, with 2 kids if I am feeling this rough and sleeping so much. argh so annoying.
OH oh oh.
If anyone in the UK is reading, who has an interest in the progression of Transplant, I really would recommend the program I watched earlier, it was Horizon: How to mend a broken heart. It had a lot of info in it, in regards to things like heart pumps, like Andreas blog that I linked to a few weeks ago. But, what was more exciting (well for me) was the whole stem cell research thing. The whole tracheal transplant thing is only availble due to being able to rebuild parts of the trachea using a persons own stem cells. This program had a section on about that, where they are working on coating a heart structure in stem cells so it becomes a heart that can be transplanted, with no need for anti rejection meds. It does amaze me where things are going. In the not to distant future, we may not need deceased donors for transplant, there may not be people dying while waiting, as we can just harvest some of the persons own cells and build them a new organ. Worth a watch anyway.
Dr Kevin Fong finds out how close scientists are to being able to mend your heart if it stops working. He meets some of the people who have undergone pioneering heart operations and the scientists who are pushing the limits of cardiac treatment.
We meet a man who has had his heart replaced with an artificial one powered by a mechanical pump he carries around in a rucksack, and witness a scientist bring a dead animal heart back to life on a workbench.
Plus, the work of an American scientist who is using stem cells to turn what she calls a 'ghost heart' - the scaffold of a heart - into a replacement heart for humans.
Here is the Iplayer link http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/ysh81/
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