Regulators.

I am at home today, waiting on a FOURTH regulator from the home health company, as we have had THREE malfunction on us since last week. THREE!

The first one worked great initially. We used it on the E tank for about 3.5 weeks without any issues. Then we got the little M6 tank, put the old regulator on it, and sent it to school with KayTar...and it blew. It kept blowing. The HHC replaced it.

The second one worked great when we first put it on, but within an hour of being on the tank...it blew! And kept blowing. The HHC replaced it with an ADULT regulator, thinking maybe the pediatric regulators were faulty. The RT told me that we were the only ones having issues with these new regulators. Great!

The third one seemed to work great initially. I tried it on both tanks and it felt VERY secure. I sent it to school on the M6 tank...and it blew! I thought that maybe I hadn't secured it well enough (because it made a pretty tight seal and I bruised my hand with putting it on/taking it off the tanks the night before), because eventually the nurse did get it to run for KayTar at school for a while after reseating it a few times.When we got it home, I cracked the tank and turned on the regulator and KA-whoooosh! Grrr. We've been trying to get it to work, because I just can't believe we have had so many faulty regulators...but nothing is working. I even tried it on the E tank, but it KA-whooshed and it was like 10 times louder. I seriously JUMPED back.

I've been reading about regulators and trying to figure out if we might be doing something that is causing this to happen, but I can't seem to find any answers! However, I did realize that the only thing that changed when we went from Working Regulators to Non-Working Regulators was that we started using the little M6 tank. The tank itself looks fine. I don't see any imperfections. But I think possibly somehow that tank is causing these regulators to break..it is the only theory I can come up with that makes any kind of sense. If it was something WE were doing incorrectly, this would have been happening since the beginning...but we used her E tank for 3.5 weeks without any problems. If it was really faulty regulators, I would believe one...maybe even two...but THREE? In a row? It just doesn't seem likely. So I'm at home today, waiting for the RT to come by and either swap out a new regulator with the intention of ONLY using it on the E tank...or with a new regulator and a new M6 tank. It is almost 2 and I haven't heard from her yet. The tank and regulator are at school with KayTar in case she needs it (with the hopes the with reseating, she can get enough O2 without it blowing), so I need to go get it when the RT is headed this way. Hopefully she calls in advance and doesn't arrive when I am out picking KayTar up...like on Monday! Most of all, I hope we can get this figured out for good...so we can have a reliable portable oxygen system for KayTar!

She was patting her tank like she was burping a baby and
said, "My baby has gas!! Get it? Because oxygen IS a gas?!"

PS: While I was writing this, the nurse emailed me and said KayTar had low sats in PE and she was attempting to start the O2, but it wouldn't make a seal at all...so she had to go without. AGH! We have to get this figured out!