How do I adapt to the Porta-Lung if I have a trach?

When I was released from the hospital in April of 1993, I still had the trach tube in my throat. The doctors had to do another tracheotomy on me because the first one was nearly closed up. They did the second a bit lower than the first. With this change, we discovered the collar on the Porta Lung covered my trach which was a potential danger as the machine could suck the air out of me. The air that the machine is putting into me could be sucked out if the trach got underneath the collar. Therefore, my parents did a couple of adaptations to get the Porta-Lung to work for me. First, they reversed the Porta-Lung collar from the outside to the inside of the machine to keep the collar away from the trach. Then they adapted a suction catheter to act as a little trach to keep the collar from covering the hole and sucking the air out of me. This is the system we still use to this day.