Mechanical ventilation for asthmatic patient

[Brittxoxo]

So my mom had a very severe asthma attack, so they had to sedate her and put her on a breathing ventilator. tomorrow will be day 10. They first 7 days were about stabilizing her gases. And ever since coming off the paralytic, she has been doing fine with those. Now we are approaching day 10. They have went down on the sedations. They have been doing breathing trails and she does fine at first, then she gets really anxious and her blood pressure sky rockets and she breaths really fast. So the dr put her on versad and a blood pressure medication. She's moving air, but theres a lot of mucus the vent is pulling out.. They dont seem super concerned, but they said her lungs sound junky because of it.. They may try and do another trail tomorrow.. And the nurse mentioned they may just have to wake her an pull the tube immediately. They have a postive outlook but this is so scary seeing my mom like this.. The last thing we want to do is go down the trach road.. We seem so close to extubating her , but so far away...

Can you please share you experiences with me.. Or give me some advice, thank you

[Me1953]

Hi my hubby was on icu on life support he has copd after a week they tried to take him off the ventilator but he couldn't breathe on his own I was really distress they put him back on the ventilator and decided on a tracheotomy they said it was just temporary till he could breath on his own.he was slowly weaned off it and was fine it left no scar he was just very frustrated when on it as he couldn't speak .it was when all this was happening that I found this site other people's experiences really helped me and gave me hope ,stay positive

[muncii in reply to Me1953]

I was on a ventilator for several days followed by a Trachi, for the same reasons you mention re your hubby. Naturally it's awkward as you can't speak and have to rely on message boards, scribbled notes, etc, not to mention the unpleasant process of having your lungs aspirated via the trachi tube (several times a day in my case) in order to get all the gunge out of the lungs. But in the end, it worked. The tube was removed painlessly and it didn't leave a scar. So I'm grateful for the work the trachi did.

I'm still rather hoarse occasionally ( 5 years down the line) but I don't know if that is due to the trachi, or the fact that I've been using asthma inhalers for about 30 years!