Hi Dave..
The sensitivity setting has always been at 65..
Chest tubes stink... and I feel for you...we had a problem where after it was put in his blood pressure dropped and they could not awaken him...his vent tidal volumes dropped in half..because the tube went into far..I was watching the volumes drop an 1/2 hour after the insertion ..and requested a nurse to immediately page a doc to come back up...
His blood pressure kept dropping .as soon as the doc entered the room monitors and alarms started going off..blood pressure raidly fell and pulse was erradict...finally Dopamine was ordered to pull the blood pressure back up and the chest tube was pulled back out a little further.....but it was a scary night..6 people jumping on him to get him stable...and finding the right amount of dopamine to keep him stable was a rocky night..
Gary 's cares are tightly supervised by the VA on the vent . I 'm inspected once a month. at irregular intervals as part of the VA 's standard protocol for in home care here...infact Gary is only one of two people in our area that was allowed to be placed at home by the VA. on a vent ....so I do have to ask permission to change vent settings to be allowed to keep him home in my care ..the only other option would be to refuse the care entirely and go strictly Medicare ..however he does have a good doc..and they go well beyond what Medicare would provide in regards to providing a rotaing air mattress and back up generator.. plus I would not feel comfortable changing the seeting myself anyway...but due to his history of over breathing the vent and pnuemothorax the pulmonologist himself turned the "peep" from 10 down to 3 to try to avoid another occurrence..so far so good......
The coughing 50 -100 a day "only" occured for the 6 weeks he was unable to use the cough assist.. ..before the cough assist stopped and after the cough assist was able to be used again ...he only typically coughs 4-6 times a day...Lisa