CPAP, Day 1

Had a nice briefing from the somno tech and got fitted.  Shockingly, they had to mix and match masks to get one to fit me.  I ended up with a medium nose + mouth mask on a small frame.

Went to the apartment, tossed in some water, and turned it on.  My prescription is for auto-titrating 4-20, but the somno tech said there was no way it would ever go anywhere near that high.

Yeah, whatever.

CPAP is an interesting feeling.  It's like trying to sleep with a supercharger on.  I fell asleep, and at some point started trying to stop the air from coming in so fast.

Not a good idea.

The reason is that the auto-titration does not work (as I had initially assumed it would) by using a pulse-ox to determine when an apneic episode is occurring.  Oh, no, it senses the torqueing down of the compressor motor, assumes the airway has collapsed, and ups the power to push it open.

So rather than feeling that torqueing down and saying, "Hey, this guy might not be really feeling this much pressure, let's back it off a bit," the little transistors say one to another, "OMG!  APNEA!  MOR PRESSER!!!!!"

Perhaps some Respironics engineers need to read Aesop's "The North Wind and the Sun."

I woke up when the pressure hit 16 and change.  I vaguely recall wondering why someone was trying to inflate my head with a full-shop air compressor.

A panicked headgear removal and a few groggy expletives followed.  I fought the air, and the air won.

Fortunately, there's a handy button that resets the ramp, dropping the pressure back down to the initial 4.  This time, I fell asleep doing mindful breathing (though not the usual part where you hold your breath...oh, my, no).  When I woke up, I had scored 7.7 hours of compliance.

At some point, we will get on the same page, and I will have a healthier, more energetic day.  I mean, it's already accomplished one thing:  I'm not going throughout my whole day wanting to go back to bed.

Just not quite for the reasons I had hoped.

2019

I rang in the New Year by taking 10 to pray "with" my wife 2.5 hours away with Counting Crows "A Long December" playing in the background.


Beat the crap out of how I rang in 2018.


It's been a long year for our family.  A year filled with hurts and losses. It seems almost every year I look back and feel like we've been through the wringer, but this was the first time in a long time where the falleness of our world actually seemed to truly touch my wife and I.  And touch us it did.  Rather in the same way one is "touched" by a defensive end or heavyweight boxer.

Yeah, it's been that kind of year.


I came far too close to losing my family for comfort.  Job, too.  My maternal grandmother passed away.  I bid farewell to EMS once again.  I (sort-of) buried Nikki.  I dropped to rare per diem at the hospital where I spent over half of my ten-year career and took a 7-on/7-off position 2.5 hours away.  Heck, I spent a night on the floor of the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, and it was the *highlight* of my trip to Michigan.


I guess the worst part is the number of things still open-ended.  I like resolutions.  I like to get to the end of the year with all the projects wrapped and all the stories closed.


Instead, I'm still two to three months out on the Dot's room.  I'm still getting into the groove of the new job.  I'm still hoping to find out Nikki can be fixed for under $500 (unlikely, but a guy can dream, eh?).


Still, I'm coming to understand that every failure can be seen as a success, as long as you survive it. 


One of my favorite forms of entertainment is Schlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, an epic (17 years and counting) daily webcomic.  I read it because while it primarily involves the sort of humor one expects from a strip with "Schlock" in the name and a titular character routinely confused for an vocal and ambulatory pile of poo, it often contains physics jokes, and occasionally wonderful bits of wisdom.  One of the last of those is the final of the "70 Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries":  "Failure is not an option. It is mandatory. The option is whether or not to let failure be the last thing you do."


2018 was the scene of the greatest failures for our family, but it was also a year of choosing to get back up.  In that way, 2018 was also the scene of our greatest successes.  I'd like to think 2019 won't be quite as bad, but it will certainly involve at least a few failures at some points, but as long as we're still on our feet at the end, I'll call it a success, too.


Finally, also in the words of Howard Tayler:  2019 can’t be good to you if you’re not good to it.