"Can't Live Without" - Airway Vest

The next piece of equipment in our "can't live without" series is Junior's airway vest. This is a piece of medical equipment and of course not something most kids need. But it is such a huge part of Junior's life and one of our "can't live without" items so I wanted to share. With Junior's lung disease it has been a true life saver. Junior's lungs create a huge amount of mucous and to clear this gunk we have to do percussion. Percussion consists of using a cupped hand to hit his chest and loosen the gunk so it can clear. The airway vest does this percussion for us. With the vest we start at low speed to loosen the secretions and then move to high speed to get those secretions moved into the upper airway so they can be cleared. After the vest we follow with the cough assist machine to completely clear those secretions but I will share about that machine in a separate post. The hoses on the front push air in and out of the vest rapidly to create the "percussion".
This is the vest that Junior wears during his treatment.
I had to cover Junior's hoses with foam and fleece which is why they look strange. Junior has learned how to disconnect his hoses but without the foam he bruises his arms as he works to get the hoses off. (the piece of cloth you see tucked under the shoulder piece on Junior's left is to protect his port during treatments)
When he is full of energy we even have to add a blanket across the vest to keep him from taking off the hoses. A very smart guy who thinks it is quite funny to make us all come running.
Junior uses the full chest vest which inflates and percusses front and back. There are other vests one of which is the chest vest which looks much like Junior's but only inflates and percusses in the front. Another is the wrap which just wraps around the chest and does not go over the shoulders like a vest. When Junior was in the hospital we had to use the wrap because his port was accessed and we couldn't put the shoulder piece over it.
Here is our little buddy ^Drew^ using the vest wrap.

Junior getting all shook up