Thursday, May 31, 2007
I feel like this story needs a visual demonstration.
Picture this: very small, very cute hippie lady sitting in a bed in the ICU. She's chugging down chocolate pudding, I'm standing next to her with the suction tube, pulling all of it out of her tracheostomy tube. Ok not such a pretty picture. But now you understand what aspiration is. Instead of going the right way, into the esophagus, it goes forward the wrong way, into the windpipe. And if they have a trach in, I end up pulling it all out of their windpipe before it falls into the lungs and rots.
Here's a prettier picture.
This is Gus. Gus has been living inside my/Sam's cupboard for the past few months. Sam, look how Gus has grown! I'm actually so busy gawking at your mutant onions that I've forgotten to water your real plant. Don't worry, it's not dead yet.
5 comments:
my summer job isnt interesting AT AL.... but i guess it pays. :( I want a mutant onion!!!
hey i found this really interesting. why does the food not pass through the normal (food?) pipe and instead goes through the wind pipe?
is it mental or is it because the flap (?) that controls which side it goes down is damaged? how do you fix this, or do you have a trach forever?
interesting? really? lol i'll try to explain then.
it's like plumbing. there's one pipe, the pharynx, which splits into the trachea (wind pipe) and the esophagus (food pipe). usually we can control all the little muscles well enough when we're eating to make the food go down the esophagus. swallowing also involves the flap (epiglottis) coming down like a shutter to cover the wind pipe so that food goes down the right way.
when there's weakness or damage, the muscles don't coordinate properly and food can end up going into the trachea. the trach tube is actually something different - it helps people breathe when they can't breathe well on their own. me pulling chocolate pudding out of the trach is just an indication that food is going down the wrong way.
clear?
gross
HAHAHA
Post a Comment