Love from Germany

Right from the beginning, medical staff (made up of doctors, nurses, respiratory and physiotherapy therapists), treated me with dignity and respect, plus encouraging me that things will get better. One example was Dr. Zuege looking for devices which would allow for me to be trached and speak. He found such a device but it had to be shipped from Germany. That was beyond my imagination that a doctor would do that for me. It finally arrived a month or so later, it was exchanged with the other trach. It was tough to put in place, painful actually. It worked initially but unfortunately I developed aspiration pneumonia from the excess sputum when using the voice component. We gave it a good “college try”, but in the end I had to return to the old trach device and go back to lip reading. Though it was frustrating, now lip reading for 6 months, I was still appreciative of the efforts made to help me get a bit of my "normal" back. Can’t fault them trying for me.