Archive | Ventilator | Breathinstephen

Live from San Francisco….It’s Asthma Night Live!

Filed under Asthma, Asthma exacerbations, Exacerbation Recovery, Intubation, intubation, People, Places and Events, Recovering from severe asthma attack, Severe asthma, Ventilator by Stephen on May 7, 2011 at 9:19 am {9 comments}

Greetings from the 14th floor isolation room a top the Moffitt building at UCSF medical center in San Francisco. Your guest host for tonight’s show is..well, me of course. I’ll be discussing how much fun it is being a patient in the hospital with severe asthma. Just happy to be alive, I was hoping to [...]

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An expensive New Years party

Filed under Asthma, Asthma exacerbations, Asthma hospitalization, Hospital bills, Ventilator by Stephen on January 18, 2010 at 6:43 pm {3 comments}

I wasn’t going to post this, but I just couldn’t resist. Here’s the bill for my little New Years week stint at the local pokey. For fun, I threw in one of the 12 pages of itemized charges to give you an idea how much individual things cost. Like for example, the Ventilator charge per [...]

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Back to Life

Filed under Asthma, Asthma hospitalization, Asthma research, Exacerbation Recovery, Friends/Bloggers, SARP, Ventilator by Stephen on January 16, 2010 at 8:35 am {9 comments}

[Not lookin too bad for someone who was on a ventilator just 11 days earlier..eh?] I’m not totally out of the woods yet and I don’t want to jinx myself, but for the first time in 2 weeks, I actually feel like a human being again. I can breath! To celebrate, I went ahead and [...]

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#97 , misinformation and a virus from Hell

Filed under Arterial Blood gases, Asthma, Asthma exacerbations, Asthma hospitalization, Asthma medical tests, Asthma Medications, Bipap, Dyspnea, Exacerbation Recovery, Intubation, Nebulizer treatments, oxygen, Peak Flows, Pulmonary function tests, Respiratory Therapy, Sally Wenzel, Shortness of Breath, Ventilator, Wheeze by Stephen on January 9, 2010 at 10:52 am {27 comments}

Battle scars: 4 failed arterial line attempts and 12 failed IV attempts. I have no veins left and my radial arteries are so scarred up from previous insertions, that it’s virtually impossible to get access unless they put a central line in. Very frustrating for the doctors and very painful for me. I’d been having [...]

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Newly discovered horror pictures

Filed under Asthma, Asthma exacerbations, Asthma hospitalization, Funny asthma stuff, Intubation, Ventilator by Stephen on October 21, 2009 at 5:11 am {8 comments}

Just in time for Halloween! Some newly discovered horror show pictures. Last week while I was clearing out my cell phone, I stumbled upon these eerie photos that my partner Douglas must have taken when I was in the hospital this past June. If you recall, I was intubated for an asthma exacerbation, but had [...]

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Propofol

Filed under Asthma Medications, Intubation, Misc, Other medical problems, People, Places and Events, Ventilator by Stephen on July 3, 2009 at 8:10 am {5 comments}

This is a picture of me on a ventilator last year during a severe asthma exacerbation ( what they call status asthmaticus). See the little IV bottle inside the blue rectangle with the milky looking stuff inside ? That’s Propofol ! Also known as Diprivan or “Milk of Amnesia” in medical circles, this is the [...]

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Number 94….

Filed under Arterial Blood gases, Asthma, Asthma exacerbations, Asthma hospitalization, Asthma medical tests, Asthma Medications, Asthma Symptoms, Asthma treatments, Bipap, Dyspnea, Exacerbation Recovery, Intubation, Nebulizer treatments, oxygen, Respiratory Therapy, Shortness of Breath, Ventilator, Wheeze by Stephen on June 8, 2009 at 10:02 am {12 comments}

…………..As in my 94th hospital admission for asthma. I had been feeling really crumby most of that weekend prior. My dyspnea was increasing and my peak flows were gradually trending downward. By Sunday evening it was pretty evident that this flare-up was getting worse , not better. I bolused myself with 60mg prednisone and decided [...]

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