Ok thank you for responding, we appreciate you. I called Monaghan earlier today to see if the manometer could be added later and they said it couldn’t so my dad chose to wait for the Aerobika model that comes with the manometer to arrive in a few days. I think he likes the idea of the meter helping him to exhale properly since he’s so new to all of this, yet profoundly grateful for you and others like scoop, Paula, and even Renee at Monaghan! He’s truly like a kid in a candy store now that he’s discovered the benefits of nebulizing and it wasn’t until he was in the hospital while recovering from his recent TAVR procedure before he’s even tried it. We’re thankful that the attending doc had a respiratory therapist give him Duoneb via nebulizer at 4AM during his first of 3 nights there since he struggled trying to sleep. It helped so much they continued to give him treatments every 12 hours until being released so I jumped on Amazon and ordered that mesh nebulizer and 7% sodium chloride right away. Then after that mesh neb suddenly died is when I frantically began searching for a suitable replacement neb machine and thankfully stumbled onto your blog asking others what neb machine they liked! Now after reading the potential added benefit from the Aerobika OPEP device you told us about, he can’t wait to get started with that too! He’s so funny sometimes 😂 but he’s been struggling for the past few years with trying to get his mucus up so he could breathe better so I’m disappointed his regular doctor never suggested he try nebulizing. My dad had told his doc several times that the Albuterol inhaler never made a difference so he never used it so I would’ve thought his doc would’ve suggested trying a nebulizer but he never did. For the past 15 years the cardiologists have said his heart was fine so they’d refer him to a pulmonologist who’d say his lungs were fine! Then it wasn’t until this past fall when he couldn’t get air while at church one Sunday so they went straight to the ER where they discovered his right coronary artery was 90% blocked so they put a stent in. He could immediately breathe great, but then just 4 days later, BAM! Right back to square 1 🙁 Then once his cardiologist cleared him to travel to Florida a few months later (they’re snowbirds who usually head south in 1st week of Dec and stay until 1st week of May) thankfully he was seen by a great cardiologist at Tampa General down here who discovered his aorta valve had narrowed down to 0.7 cm2 which is considered severe stenosis. Opening should be 3-5 cm2!
But even after they replaced his valve with a new one using minimally invasive TAVR procedure he STILL struggled breathing! Ughh! BUT, at least now his breathing is slightly better due to the benefits of neb’ing sodium chloride. Hopefully this new pulmonologist will discover something on May 20th that can be done to improve his breathing cuz last pulmonologist (from 3 years ago) diagnosed asbestosis (50% left lung) but apparently couldn’t do anything to improve his breathing. While recovering in hospital from TAVR my mom and I asked if a pulmonologist could pop in to have a look and a portable xray revealed fluid in his right (good lung) so I’m sure his difficulty breathing has much to do with these fluids but between diuretics (water pill) he’s taking and now nebulizing saline there’s not much more he can do until this advanced pulmonologist see him later in May. He’s hopeful this OPEP devise might “shake/loosen things up” even more in his lungs to draw more fluids up. Hence the urgency with all of this stuff. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of just how much we’ve appreciated you as well as others here! Have a glorious evening and thanks again for your willingness to share info and always so promptly too!