Word: trach
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When he went to Washington to lobby for research funds, he suddenly lost his voice due to a trach replacement that had been made a few days earlier. A trach needs to be changed every three weeks so that tissue does not grow over it. The body tries to expel the trach because it is a foreign element; this is when secretions form. When the tissue grows, it can cut off the air supply by closing the hole in which the trach rests. Every three weeks, the whole apparatus has to be torn...
...have to breathe on my own for a while, while they cut away. The doctor literally takes out a scalpel and cuts away in my throat at the granulated tissue that has formed in there. So it's a little scary. And the down side is that once the trach is changed, it takes a number of days for it to settle into position so that you can talk effectively. So the first couple of days, the slightest movement of the tube will cause the trach to get out of position, and you don't have any voice...
This is what happened just before his appearance on Capitol Hill. He had no trouble with his voice when he met with the Clintons in the White House. But the trach was not in a good position. He was nervous when he got to the Hill: "I mean, all the media were there. I think 12 or 15 Senators were there, all friends and supporters--Paul Simon, Pat Leahy, [Paul] Wellstone from Minnesota, Nancy Kassebaum, John Kerry from Massachusetts, Bob Kerrey from Nebraska--all there in the front row, two feet away from me. Like, right in my face...
...institution. Because of his celebrity, he was given a single room, for which he was grateful, but it made him feel isolated from the other patients. Two security guards were posted outside. Reeve's first "pop-off" occurred in that room. A pop-off happens when the trach is not secure. Unless one is used to breathing off the vent, breathing is impossible...
...enlarged by his imagination. He was learning one of the penalties of living solely in one's thoughts. Merely the idea of being put in the shower terrified him. "I thought, 'What if something happens to the vent in the shower?' 'What if the water gets into the trach tube?' And so on. To get you into the shower, they've got a kind of hammock to which they transfer you from the bed, and you're lying there in a kind of net. I was afraid of being rocked as they moved me. I was afraid of the water...