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1:01pm December 7, 2012

(If you’re wondering why this is in the #actuallyautistic tag, it’s because it deals with sensory stuff.)

These are some photos of my new ultrasonic nebulizer. (It’s a Mabis MiniBreeze, for anyone interested.) I’ve been allowing my lungs to get horrible (I have bronchiectasis), probably making several infections and pneumonia worse, because ever since March I have had so much trouble with the noise made by my old nebulizer (Devilbiss Pulmo-Aide Compact Compressor) that I haven’t been able to bring myself to use it more than a handful of times. My old one makes this horrible low-frequency racket that is worse than anything I’ve ever heard out of any of my medical equipment, even worse than the high-pitched squeaking my bipap sometimes makes. No amount of hearing protection made it tolerable.

For some reason I had this weird mental block about portable nebulizers. Like somehow I couldn’t use them at home or… something, I don’t even know what. And most ultrasonic nebulizers I’ve seen are portable. But I finally got this one and I love it. It has, as you can see in the photos, both the ability to be used by putting your mouth on it, or by attaching a tube and using a mask. I don’t know which one I like better yet, I’ve done both. It makes noise, but so much less noise than the old one that I can’t even compare it. Like you can hear the fan whirring softly. I don’t know if people whose hearing range is high enough can hear the ultrasound, or even whether I can hear it or not over the other noises in my apartment, but it doesn’t bother me. (Some “ultrasonic” products seem to give off a ~16-19 MHz noise that I can hear. Such noises still don’t bother me as much as loud low frequency rumbling.)

For anyone who doesn’t know, bronchiectasis makes it hard to clear phlegm from your lungs, resulting in frequent infections. As in mine’s mild and I’ve had about 5 infections I can remember in the past year, at least 2 of which were definitely pneumonia, and spent a long time in the hospital with pneumonia recently. It’s harder to clear those infections, and those infections can cause more of the same damage, resulting in more severe bronchiectasis. I do think this last bout of pneumonia may have made my bronchiectasis worse. If the cycle goes on forever you can die from it once your heart becomes unable to pump blood through your lungs, but if you treat it, it’s usually not much more dangerous than having asthma.

As I said, mine’s mild, but I have to work at keeping it that way. Basically every day, twice a day, I’m supposed to use a nebulizer treatment with 7% hypertonic saline. That helps loosen the crud in my lungs so I can cough it up easier. It’s similar to treatment for some kinds of cystic fibrosis, only my insurance (Medicare/Medicaid) refuses to cover the saline for people with just bronchiectasis and no cystic fibrosis added, so I have to make my own. Anyway, once I started saline treatments before, it went from feeling constantly like I was coughing and coughing and barely anything was coming up, and feeling like breathing was a huge effort, to feeling fairly okay (still coughing all the time, but actually bringing stuff up). And I got fewer infections when I was using the nebulizer all the time, because I was able to get the crud out of my lungs. Therefore, it’s really important and I should have been more diligent about getting a nebulizer months ago. But I wasn’t, and my lungs have gotten steadily worse, so that ought to teach me a lesson about things like this.

Notes:
  1. withasmoothroundstone posted this