They went in with a horizontal incision on my neck front again, but also through a vertical incision through the right side of my neck -- Busy as beavers they must have been, with two portals into my throat!

Now that the failed portion of the flap has be removed, the vertical slice has healed nicely, but there are still two very small places in the horizontal slice where it occasionally still leaks. I'm getting a lot less secretion drainage at the trach and the suction machine has definitely not been having to work as hard the last few days!

I'm seeing the nurse practitioner again today (It's been weekly followups with her since the surgery) -- That's another good thing about using a CCC instead of a single Doc's office -- She is the key person regarding the followup care, taking care of home delivery of food and pump sets, trach support machinery (air moisturizer, suction, etc.) and she will be arranging stuf like swallowing test/therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, etc., writes prescriptions, cleans out sutures, etc.

However, not all teams have the nurse practitioner -- She did a presentation recently at a conference on her role, esp in the followup after the surgery.