Boltlady
Governor
Last year I gave mine back! My lung doctor had arranged for me to have a Trilogy machine which is one of the types of ventilators being used for the virus patients. It was supposed to be able to do all sorts of things and cost my insurance company $1,900. per month. The problem was that I had wound up in the hospital some 4 times in the previous year and a half and my doc was trying to keep me from going back. It didn't work well for me.
The deal was that I was supposed to try and sleep with it on at night and if I couldn't do that I was supposed to use it at least 4 hours a day for my insurance to keep covering it. Since it was at my house the therapist only came by every 3 or 4 weeks to check on how I was doing with it. It was helpful for an hour or so and after that, I couldn't breathe very well. My oxygen level would go way down even though it was supposed to be fixing that. They would try to make some adjustments that didn't work and I wound up too scared to use it. Drowning is no fun and that's what it seemed like when my oxygen would drop waaay down. It makes me wonder if some of the virus patients might have the same problem and not realize that it could be the machine making it worse. They keep saying that if they're on the ventilators for a long time they usually don't make it through. Of course I had told the people what was happening with me but medics rarely believe the patient.
In my case I have COPD and allergic asthma both. The treatments tend to contradict each other since one malady causes problems with oxygen going in and the other causes problems with it going out. The Trilogy was supposed to solve that since it's designed to work both ways but it might be that they just never got it adjusted right for me. At any rate, I sent the thing back. I don't really need it now anyway since I'm a little more mobile now and am able to keep going on an oxygen machine and some inhalers. I had been bed ridden for quite a while from crushing my ankle and both my lungs and heart had gotten very weak from it. Being able to move around some now has done wonders for strengthening my heart, no problem there, but my lungs give me a hard time.
This wasn't supposed to be about me. It is my attempt to understand why the virus victims tend to die after being put on ventilators. My experience with the Trilogy machine does make me wonder.
The deal was that I was supposed to try and sleep with it on at night and if I couldn't do that I was supposed to use it at least 4 hours a day for my insurance to keep covering it. Since it was at my house the therapist only came by every 3 or 4 weeks to check on how I was doing with it. It was helpful for an hour or so and after that, I couldn't breathe very well. My oxygen level would go way down even though it was supposed to be fixing that. They would try to make some adjustments that didn't work and I wound up too scared to use it. Drowning is no fun and that's what it seemed like when my oxygen would drop waaay down. It makes me wonder if some of the virus patients might have the same problem and not realize that it could be the machine making it worse. They keep saying that if they're on the ventilators for a long time they usually don't make it through. Of course I had told the people what was happening with me but medics rarely believe the patient.
In my case I have COPD and allergic asthma both. The treatments tend to contradict each other since one malady causes problems with oxygen going in and the other causes problems with it going out. The Trilogy was supposed to solve that since it's designed to work both ways but it might be that they just never got it adjusted right for me. At any rate, I sent the thing back. I don't really need it now anyway since I'm a little more mobile now and am able to keep going on an oxygen machine and some inhalers. I had been bed ridden for quite a while from crushing my ankle and both my lungs and heart had gotten very weak from it. Being able to move around some now has done wonders for strengthening my heart, no problem there, but my lungs give me a hard time.
This wasn't supposed to be about me. It is my attempt to understand why the virus victims tend to die after being put on ventilators. My experience with the Trilogy machine does make me wonder.
