Well, I'm not sure there is a whole lot you can do physically to make the trache easier to handle. Your state of mind might make it easier to handle, or make it a worse experience than it otherwise would be. Try not to get too psyched out, thinking its going to be horrible. It likely will be horrible, yes, but worrying about it won't make it better.

The first few days will be the worst. You will need to cough a lot, trying to get secretions out of your throat. Slowly it starts to plug up a little bit and you can manually suction it out with the normal suction tube. Sometimes it gets plugged up even more, and the nurses will have to help out with what they called "deep suction". This can be a somewhat scary experience if they are not able to help you out in short order. Once in awhile they even had to pop the tube right out and replace it with a fresh one. I was also worried about sleeping, but knew that I was in what they referred to as a "step-down unit" with three nurses for five patients. The nurses were only a few feet away, if anything was happening.

After the first few days, they removed the first plug in the trache and replaced it with something smaller. By this time, I wasn't coughing up as much gunk and had to suction much less often. Then after another day of this, they moved me to a normal room since I didn't require as much supervision from the nurses. Another day or two later, they removed the trache completely, and sutured the opening closed.