There are a lot of different tubes to chose from, but the smaller hospitals only have 2 different models. Tubes also come with or without an inner tube, and they either have a fenestration or not. A fenestration is a hole in the upper area of the tube, so that air can go through it up towards the vocal cords instead of out through the hole in your throat. It is good if you want to speak without much effort, and you can even have a little vent in front of the hole so it opens as soon as you breathe in and closes as soon as you push out air to speak.

Tubes with inner tubes are very easy to keep clean and the risk that dried phlegm may block the tube is minimal since you can remove the inner tube easily and clean it out, and still have a perfectly clear airway with the outer tube. Tubes that don't have an inner tube are very difficult to clean, especially if you have a slight cold and cough up thick phlegm. Any little irritation produces more phlegm that I then have to try to remove, so in order to clean a tube without an inner tube, one has to have a suction unit close by. That limits your life since you always have to make sure you can plug in a suction unit anywhere you go.

OK, so the new tube was one of those without an inner tube and with a fenestration. It was soft and much more flexible than the first tube I tried. The problem was that instead of an irritation at the end of the tube, like with the first tube I had, the new tube irritated around the fenestration. I started to have problems talking since there was not sufficient air moving up over my vocal cords. I finally lost my voice completely and during an examination they found that a polyp had grown over the fenestration which totally blocked the airway above the tube. Yeah, good thing it wasn't a polyp below the tube, eh?

Because of the polyp and some other granulation caused by this tube I was admitted to the hospital in Boden. The doctors were debating on what to do next, and I was upset and anxious because I didn't feel safe with any of the tubes we had tested.

The first thing the doctors did was to make a new hole (fenestration) that wouldn't irritate the mucus membrane, but that didn't work. They also attempted to treat the polyp so it would go away. They burnt it with a laser to make it smaller, they put some weird acid on it to make it shrink, but all that takes time so I was still in hospital week after week.

After a couple of weeks they decided to put in a tube made of silver. Thats an older type of tube but very effective when it comes to treating granulation. There is something about silver that when it oxidizes it is very good for this kind of thing. The silver tube was terrible to use even though it had an inner tube. Since it was both heavy and rigid it irritated a lot and I had a constant flood of yucky phlegm. It was so stiff that I couldn't even wash my hair without starting to cough up phlegm, every move I made was a dead sure cause for more phlegm.

One of my doctors went to a convention in Italy and found a new type of tube that just had come out on the market. She thought it would be interesting to try it on me since she know how easily my mucus membranes became irritated. The tube was soft and flexible and the fenestration was made so that it couldn't irritate anywhere.

Things would have been great.... if it weren't for the fact that the company delivering the tube was totally incompetant It took weeks for them to deliver the tube and I was still in hospital waiting. They had promised to deliver it in 2 days... guess they aren't that good at math since it took them 3 weeks!

So after 8 weeks and 3 days in hospital I could finally go home. October 30th, the day of my birthday. What a relief!!!