Grilled Joel

The problems with my trach button have been continuing. This past week was another appointment to try to fix the issue. However, I wondered if I was actually participating in an experiment instead.

Due to my caregiver schedule, I have very limited days that I can go out to appointments. My ENT doesn't normally do procedures on the days I have this freedom, but he very graciously rearranged his appointments to make a time that worked for me. This part was relatively simple, but the procedure was delayed for several weeks due to maintenance issues.

Since previous attempts haven't stopped the drainage, my doctor wanted to go more drastic. This time, he would take a laser and burn off excess skin around my button. However, this process produces smoke that could contain viruses and it needed contained. Unfortunately, the smoke vacuum was broken and we had to wait for parts.

Tuesday morning, I got up quite early to get to my 8:00 procedure, but still ended up arriving 20 minutes late. After numbing my button area and putting on special glasses, the ENT started to laser around my trach. As he did, I noticed a nearly constant stream of smoke floating past my face and up my nose, with an unpleasant smell. I joked that I was being grilled while my thoughts wondered why we waited for a vacuum to be fixed that apparently wasn't doing its job.

After about 15 minutes of grilling around my neck, and adjusting the suction to collect smoke, the procedure was complete. With the early start, I considered doing other activities in the city, but ended up returning home. It felt somewhat odd to get home from a doctor's appointment around the time I'm usually leaving.

It has been a few days since my grilling and I'm not sure if it has helped or not. I will give it more time to heal, but it's part of living the quad life. Medical procedures are not like mechanics where one change solves the issue. Taking multiple tries, and then more, are sometimes required to find the solution. I pray we will soon fix it though and I can have less discomfort and not go through 2-3 shirts a day due to neck junk.