Plan D? Plan E?

When my dad was first ordered oxygen for home use, the plan was to put the concentrator in the middle of his apartment and trail the tubing around, attached to him wherever he wandered. That lasted a couple days. His complaint was the inconvenience of the tubing, managing it while walking so it didn't become a tripping hazard. Luckily, he never actually tripped over it, but that danger was/is ever present in our minds.

Plan B was to keep the concentrator near his lift chair, the place he spends most of his time. A small amount of the 50 feet of tubing could be played out, giving him moderate mobility while staying connected, and the rest remaining coiled up in a box next to the machine. It didn't seem to want to stay coiled up, so eventually a section of it was loosely "knotted" around a convenient protrusion on the machine, with about 10 feet left to keep track of. He didn't need it while sleeping, and this served well enough, even after he moved in with the family up here.

Plan C was actually a lessening of use. A year on nebulizer meds yielded increasing lung capacity, until the county nurse (who regularly visits as part of our using county home health aids for his care) declared she heard breath sounds all through his lungs, a first for her. They agreed that he would use the oxygen only when he needed it, during those times of high activity.

The afternoon I returned home to hear him declare he didn't need it anymore (at all, to hear him say it) ended with a hasty set of phone calls to find out just what the heck the nurse thought she was doing! Hearing the full, rational explanation was quite helpful, and I got to (try to) pass the corrected information back on to him. Somehow the wrong information stuck in his brain quite clearly for days and the corrected news lit like a shy little finch, flitting away at the slightest movement.

Nothing stays the same like change. The past few weeks have seen him increasingly shorter of breath with just the slightest activity. It all started, of course, just days after his doctor's check-up. Now he needs his oxygen for activities like dressing and undressing, as well as my increasing help for him to do so. Morning and evening routines have relocated from the bedroom to the living room, and we've been looking for a way to have oxygen for him at both ends of the house.

We could go back to plan A, but reject it for the same reason as before: tripping hazard. However, the idea of a central location for the concentrator and using two hoses, one going either direction, seems feasible. Paul checked the connection of the tubing to the machine, and it's a simple pull-off, push-on action of plastic over metal. But it could be made easier.

Ever use two hoses at the same faucet? There's a little thing called a "Y" valve that screws onto the faucet, with each hose screwing onto it, and a lever closing of one or the other hose, or allowing water to flow through both. Oxygen tubing needs one of those. Oh, I admit it's a very special-use item. After all, if oxygen is your only health need, it's fairly simple to trail tubing around with you. No walker to catch in it, good vision to see where it is, strong arms to move it out of the way. Who needs fancy?

Well, my dad does. So Plan D was to call the company providing the concentrator and ask if they had such a thing as a "Y" valve for their tubing. Well, sort of, but it was a connection so one concentrator could feed two tubes simultaneously. He doesn't need 2 tubes. Not at one time. Just one. First one in bed, then one in the living room. As long as he's been wearing it and is "stocked up", he's mobile enough to get to the bathroom or the dining table without it.

On to Plan E then. I ordered extra tubing ("You mean you've never ordered it? It should be replaced at least every 90 days!") (Who knew?) Did I want green or white? Yes. Surprise me. When it arrives late this week or early next, the concentrator will go in the middle of the house, with tubing heading off in both directions, taped to baseboards and down on carpeting under doors, so there's an end with the nose piece by his lift chair and one by his bed. When he goes to bed, the living room piece of tubing will be pulled off and the bedroom piece pushed on. And vice versa. Twice a day. Every day. And his pajamas can go back to staying in the bedroom. And I can sit on the bed next to him and rest my knees periodically while he's getting dressed/undressed.

The gal on the phone offered to let us rent a second concentrator. I'm pretty sure she understood my declining the offer when she informed me that, no, Medicare would not actually pay for a second one. So no Plan F. Or at least not that one. I have no doubt that some day there may have to be some kind of Plan G.

I can wait.