Jordan, I had a trach while in the hospital but it was removed before I left. Not a big deal at all. Amy makes a really good point about having writing materials at hand. When I regained consciousness, I had a million questions and at 1:00 a.m. sent my poor husband scrambling for paper and pen.

Wayne is right that the suctioning out is weird at first, but that was only necessary in my case for the first few hours afer the surgery.

Bottom line, a trach is not something to expend much energy worrying about.