"I was born with a rare condition and now permanently live with a metal tube in my throat"

Real Fix

Credit: SWNS / Alii Robinson  A woman born with a rare condition has to live with a metal tube in her throat to help her breath.  Alii Robinson was born with an extremely rare condition which meant that her lower jaw and upper airway couldn't form properly.  Due to the severity, doctors had to perform an emergency tracheostomy operation weeks after she was born.   A tube and a metal tube were inserted into Alii's throat to help her breath normally at just five weeks.  Alii, now 32, has been living with the metal tube in her throat since and even has to take it out everyday to clean it.

Transcript

00:00So this is a tracheostomy, it helps you breathe, so if I pull this out here, it goes into my

00:05windpipe and it helps me breathe.

00:35Right, so I have two different valves, I've got this one here that I wear at day time.

00:47When I breathe in you can see the air goes in, and when I breathe out it kind of cuts

00:51off because it helps me get a voice, so it pushes the air over my vocal cords.

00:55Now at bedtime I have a different valve, so this is the HME, can you see that?

01:01A bit higher.

01:04And there's my other valve as well, here it is.

01:07My daughter is behind the camera and she's going to take this one out and put the bedtime

01:12one in.

01:13So are you ready?

01:14Pull it, pull it!

01:15Whoa, speedy.

01:16This is, as you can see, it sticks out more, so I can put this on, which is a HME, which

01:33stands for Humidify and Moisture Exchange.

01:36I breathe through all three, my nose, my mouth and my trachea, so there's three different

01:54ways that air can get into my lungs.

01:57I don't know how I do it, I don't know how I split it, because I've literally done it.

02:02Excuse me, I've done it since I was a baby, like I've always had my trachea, if I have

02:07a blocked nose then it affects me like if I have a cold, so then I breathe through my

02:14mouth and my trachea more, but yeah, there's literally no, I can't explain how I do it

02:21because I've literally done it forever and it's just how I breathe, I guess it's just

02:23how you guys breathe when you're breathing through your nose or whatever, yeah I can't,

02:28there's no real way I can explain how I do it because I just breathe.

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