Atsugi
Moderator emeritus
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2011
- Messages
- 5,921
- Reason
- Lost a loved one
- Diagnosis
- 12/2010
- Country
- US
- State
- FL
- City
- Orlando
My PALS Krissy takes about an hour daily to use the Tobii eye-gaze-controlled computer that VA supplied. She surfs the net and reads email. Mostly, she constructs phrases for the speech synthesizer to say like: “Becca, I need you”, “I like that”, and “Move my leg, please.”
But frankly, we move her around too much to use the computer. She is rarely in one place more than 3 hours—the TV chair, the hospital bed, the power chair, the van, or a restaurant. Since it takes me maybe ten minutes to adjust the computer stand and calibrate the eyeball thingy.
Last week her voice became pretty useless—a combination of lack of breath and difficulty forming the words—so she made up some signals: a sniffly nose means “oxygen” and an open mouth means “Cough Assist” while puckered lips means “nebulizer.”
The VA dropped off about 1000 bottles of oxygen. And I’ve learned lately that too much O2 can result in increased CO2, but I really don’t know why yet.
Unfortunately Kris has been horizontal lately and on oxygen full time. Of course the cannula is useless if you’re mouth-breathing the whole time.
Yesterday she began to cry and said “My lungs are failing.” So I told the kids not to make a mess in the van, ‘cause we’ll be selling it soon.
“Paul” is a really good movie. The m@therf#cking language is not for kids, though.
But frankly, we move her around too much to use the computer. She is rarely in one place more than 3 hours—the TV chair, the hospital bed, the power chair, the van, or a restaurant. Since it takes me maybe ten minutes to adjust the computer stand and calibrate the eyeball thingy.
Last week her voice became pretty useless—a combination of lack of breath and difficulty forming the words—so she made up some signals: a sniffly nose means “oxygen” and an open mouth means “Cough Assist” while puckered lips means “nebulizer.”
The VA dropped off about 1000 bottles of oxygen. And I’ve learned lately that too much O2 can result in increased CO2, but I really don’t know why yet.
Unfortunately Kris has been horizontal lately and on oxygen full time. Of course the cannula is useless if you’re mouth-breathing the whole time.
Yesterday she began to cry and said “My lungs are failing.” So I told the kids not to make a mess in the van, ‘cause we’ll be selling it soon.
“Paul” is a really good movie. The m@therf#cking language is not for kids, though.