A Vest!!

One of Finn's daily required treatments is airway clearance.  Since the time he was about 6 weeks old the Respiratory Therapist (RT) had prescribed 10 minutes of Chest Physical Therapy (CPT) twice a day.  At first I did it with my hands, just beating on his ribcage.  However, it's pretty hard to do it correctly and effectively that way, so we moved on to percusors to help us out.  Around the time he was 12 months old, the RT started talking to us about getting him a vest.  We even switched insurance carriers this year, just because the coverage on durable medical equipment (which is what the vest falls under) is better.  It turns out that there are 3 different companies that manufacture vests.  In the end, they all do HFCWO (High-Frequency Chest Wall Oscillation) and since there are industry standards, they are all effective.  So, in making a decision, it comes to down to other smaller factors.  One vest has one air tube to help it inflate, the other two have 2 tubes.  One vest is machine dryable, while the other is only machine washable.  Yep, silly little things like that.  We were actually able to eliminate one company quite quickly, but the other two companies were kind of a toss up.  We went through the pro's and con's many times.  We finally had sales reps out here for both companies.  After what feels like an agaonizingly long time, we made a decision!  Finn now has a nice new The Vest by Hill-Rom.  After struggling for a year and half to do CPT, this has been wonderful.  He loves his new vest and has not missed a treatment since getting it.  It's easy for both mommy and Finn.  Win-WIN!