Continuous positive airway pressure = CPAP.
I don’t have sleep apnea; Steve does. Now maybe I do and don’t know it. I don’t know how or why Steve was diagnosed but he was. Out of all the doctors through all the years I’ve been to for spinal injuries, dystonia and supraventricular tachycardia no doctor ever accused me of that.
That’s right. Maybe because of my gender – female – doctors tend to accuse me of having something wrong rather than diagnosing me. Maybe because I’m a woman and historically any ailments were attributed to the mind rather than the body.
It’s all in your head.
Now that Steve has SVTs it’s a major issue – because he’s male. With me I was told mostly women have it, in fact the doctor’s wives all had it too, so they wave their hand, actually through the air, to make it all seem normal to me.
After many years of on and off that CPAP machine Steve’s doctor told him to use it again. After seven stays and six admissions for heart failure that was probably caused by the verapamil he took for the SVTs for several years and a $500,000.00 bill and a six hour intense ablation under anesthesia, he bought another one.
I got this idea that I’d take the old one. My sleep pattern is on and off because the head of the bed is on the wall of two elevators – old clunky elevators – and it runs all night especially on Fridays and Saturdays. I used to think there couldn’t possibly be that many seniors coming and going at all hours. Its landing floor of course was mine.
- And no there is no place else to put a king size bed and still be able to open the door.
That being said, ear plugs work for a while till they irritate the ears and result in discomfort worse than the elevator noise. Maybe I’m allergic to whatever they’re made of. Latex? Something else? Who knows. I don’t.
When I wake up in the morning, yesterday still lingers. It’s not easy sometimes to shake the recent past of the day before when it’s so close to the present.
That’s when I put on the CPAP, lay back for about 10 minutes, then before I know it, I’m up and about, yesterday faded as it should be and the new day engages a willing partner. Me.
Many doctors attest to the boost in energy a CPAP produces. I think I was looking for the ‘feeling’ of a boost, which isn’t there. Yet I know by the result, not the absence of feeling, that I’ve been boosted.
That sold me. Now I’m all in. Periodically though. As I see fit.
FAT-FREE CHEF™ 