For those of you who are tired of hearing about my breathing, just stop here. Don't read any further. Its really the same old thing. Only more.
The past week I had been having trouble breathing again. AGAIN! The stent had been in since Dec 17th.... then the whole sedation thing.... yada yada yada....and so I had been doing pretty well. Last weekend got really bad. I just stayed in the house and breathed slowly. I made an appointment for my doctor to see me Monday morning. He was going to do a broncoscopy and see what the heck was going on. Apparently, there was a piece of tissue growing over my airway, right by my vocal chords. If you heard me talking around this time frame, you would understand right away. Sometimes, no sound came out at all!
He finished the broncoscopy and said, "We're headed to surgery!" It wasn't that it was an emergency surgery or anything - it's that his wife was going to have a baby the next day and he was going to be gone for a week and a half and he knew I couldn't/shouldn't wait that long. So, without even getting dressed, they wheeled me to pre-op, got me ready, and in we went. He removed that stinking piece of tissue, and sure enough, the stent was moving up and down. Every time I coughed, it irritated that little area by my vocal chords and as a defense mechanism, it started growing tissue. So what's a doctor to do? Take out the stent. Oh my living word! All this to have the stent removed? He said that the tissue underneath the stent looked really good. We have hopes that we won't have to put another one in (I mean we have HIGH hopes on that one) and maybe, just maybe my treachea will stop growing shut all the stinking time.
I left that early evening, came home and went to work the next day. I feel great - my voice has returned and I'm breathing is terrific. Wow - who knew breathing could be so difficult?
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