What I do: I wake up and do my albuterol while I do my first vest setting for 5 mins at 10 HZ's, then after my albuterol is done I turn it to the highest 25 hz's and do my huffs and coughs. Then I do my hypertonic with the vest setting on 15 hz's for 5 mins, after the vest stops I keep sitting on the foot pedal so the vest keeps going till it hits it's safety mechanism to stop after the bell has gone off. After a bit my hypertonic is done, and I again turn it to 25 hz's and do my huffs/coughs and get rid of more stuff. My last aresol is my colistin and I do that while my vest is on 20 hz's for 5 mins. I keep the vest going for a while on that setting until my neb is done, and then put it on 25 HZ's and do some real strong and productive huffs/coughs. All said and done, this takes me a little over an hour, maybe an hour and a half max if im cruising the net and not fully paying attention to my vest.
I do the same thing at night, with the exception of adding pulmozyme last to the routine (I keep the same vest routine, 5 mins each @ those settings with strong coughing at 25 hz's). Doing this routine enables me to work full time, and even with overtime. Of course we are all different, and I remember you saying your PFT's weren't as good as mine, so I have no idea what you truely require, and what may be timesink over kill for you, but that is what works for me, and it takes about 2-3 hrs from my day to keep myself in tip top shape.
As someone else has said, why are you doing pulmozyme twice a day? Everyone I know (myself included) does it once a day. I'm not sure if it would give further benefit at twice a day. Also I know there are varying opinions on the vest use, as in amount of time to use it at each setting etc, but I personally think 5 mins on each setting should be fine. Hell even if you do 10 mins, that's still only 30 mins (not with the huff settings). How long are you using your vest for on each setting? There is so much air flow in the lungs that the vest produces, I would think that after you are done with a neb, if you are doing your vest for like 15+ mins each setting, it could also be drying out your lungs due to the long periods of forced airflow.
I bet the vest settings you use are your biggest time culprit. If you could try and get more exercise during the day to help with bringing stuff up, maybe you could swap from 3 times a day vest and nebs, to twice a day? I dunno...Of course all speculation on my end, and I know we are all different, but doing my routine twice a day really works for me.
