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My Nebulizer’s “Dirty Head” for Colistin and Hyper-Sal 7% Saline

June 29, 2010

3 headsI mentioned on Twitter or the site (I’m getting so old now, I can’t remember anything) that I was using my “dirty head” at the moment. Someone asked for clarification, so I thought it to be worthy of a post now, so I can explain how I roll with 5 treatments in a row.

Pre-requisite reading: Fatboy’s Nebulizer Life

Now that you know my routine, here is the tip part of the write-up on the method I’ve learned after 4 years of having eFlows. I touched on it when talking about my 7% saline dose. Did you catch it? When I receive a new shipment of colistin, PSI is nice enough to send me a new Trio head. Getting Foundation Care to send a new head was like pulling teeth – it was every 3rd shipment and the metal disc was all bubbly and clogged by then. To say I’m happy with PSI would be a great understatement.

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A Medical Look at a Regular Day

June 25, 2010

BoredToday, I just got fed up with all of these nebulizer treatments, but I did them anyway. I’ve been thinking about portraying what a normal day in my life looks like since I “get to stay home and hope people send me money,” which is an old line Beautiful used to say when I was just starting the home business. It’s a bit more than that now, but I suppose it still rings somewhat true, only further into the future rather than hoping they send money that day.

I looked up at the DVR machine this morning and it was 10:12am. I had made Beautiful’s lunch and made my omelet to down my huge breakfast and sent her out the door packing around 7am. After taking care of client work that didn’t get done last night when I passed out on the couch from a long day’s work, I started my nebs.

Everything is pretty organized now, so it is just a matter of making a stop at the fridge, the counter, and opening a cabinet door and coming back to the couch. This month, I’m on everything, so my routine includes Albuterol, Pulmozyme, Cayston, Colistin, and 7% saline. It’s a heck of a run, but I am ever so thankful that I don’t have a compressor and can do them all in my Trio and Altera in about 15-20 minutes if I don’t get distracted when one finishes. It’s really easy to put the neb down and just keep working in my line of work. If it weren’t for that technology, I’d be staring at 2.5 hours of nebs twice a day and an hour at another time and I would surely not be as compliant as I am.

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Hypertonic Saline (7%) for Cystic Fibrosis

March 22, 2010

I’ve fought tooth and nail to not do 7% saline aerosols, basically since the first time I sucked it down at least 2 years ago. It’s nasty! I’ve never been able to do a saltwater rinse after oral surgery, sinus rinses, or swallow seawater. I have a very strong reaction to such a high concentration of saline, almost a gag-reflex. My chest tightens, I start to salivate like there’s a porterhouse in front of me, and my chest tightens some more.

I decided it was going to be worth the effort and discomfort after reading this article over on RunSickBoyRun.com: Hypertonic Saline Solution (7%). Come on back after reading about the empirical evidence that it works and check out my personal experiences in the last few weeks.

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