C'mon Over, We Have Oxygen

I just got off the phone with my brother who had his thyroid removed earlier this week, the gland being full of cancer. He has lupus and gets lumps, tumors, anywhere in his body---ten years ago, one was removed an inch from his heart for which he also received preventative radiation. Too much radiation, according to his thyroid doctor, thereby causing the cancer.

His voice is raspy, as was mine after my surgery, but his outlook is good, glad to get rid of it. In ten weeks he has to go back for more radiation. My little brother, the one carried around on a pillow like a small Jesus, suffers more health issues as an adult, yet also has a happier life in that he has a terrific wife, two great kids, a cat and his own home. Maybe. Who am I to say?

Myself, I am going for blood tests to determine if there is any iron deficiency, accounting for the fatigue and memory loss. This is from the very nice young man doctor who has prescribed a CPAP machine for my moderate/severe sleep apnea that I pick up later this week. I can't wait, and am hoping to use the word apocalypse the day after.

My skull: there is a very high arch to the palate of my mouth, which makes the area that my nose has for intake smaller. Large tonsils, a small airway in my throat and a wider neck stop air from entering, so all in all, I haven't seen necessary oxygen levels for anyever. I stop breathing thirty-nine times an hour. This is a relief, a fixable relief, for it means I am not crazy, thank you, and will probably start remembering things like what day it is. I can only hope that it also untangles some of the time constraint mess I have gotten into. Scary part is that some of this is central apnea, meaning my brain forgets to tell the diaphragm to bring in air. Woof.

Anywhateverelse, I present this entry as a record to be referred to in later years, nothing really meant for entertaining here. Apologies to the audience. However, do tuck in under the covers and position the pillow for the best respiration. You will feel fresher in the morning and may even roar the sun up. Watch for a lovely sunrise, the gold and pinks revive senses and tell of garden flowers which sleep themselves under beds of leaves and straw. Oh berries, tell us of your sweet dreamings. Good night.

Continued Breathing

...is something all of us like to do. Having received (and lost) the results of the sleep test, there seems to be both obstructive and central apneas going on in the wee hours between dusk and dawn. Obstructive doesn't bother me as much as the idea of central apnea, which is when your brain does not put out the signal to breathe so the lungs go on hold until the brain is starving for oxygen and the reptilian medulla shrieks for god's sake breathe. I always thought it was a party trick that I could stop breathing and not feel the need to inhale, that holding breath was a form of deep meditation that led to diving for pearls in the Sea of Japan. Apparently, not when you're sleeping.

Really, I have to find the papers, looked and looked already..can get another copy later during the upcoming visit to the specialist, but this is what I have lived with for almost thirty years; not knowing where the hell I am or anything else for that matter. Except my son. And now my students. The mother instinct supersedes any lack of oxygen, just ask any woman with children. But now, where the H are those print-outs? All in all, I can't wait to get my CPAP machine chugging away, inflating me with air and humidity, you just watch the difference.

My appointment to see the sleep doctor is next Thursday, the 25th; then there has to be another appointment for a respiratory therapist who explains the machine to me. Good heavens, could this take any longer after diagnosis? I will awaken at age fifty-eight, not recognizing who that is in the mirror anymore and let's get going for time is short. My job is hanging by threads due to certification requirements not met. If I lose this, what on earth? This business is classified as a disability, I can only hope it buys me time.

How odd that I usually sign off this blog with a sleeptime wish, and here it has become my lifeline to the living. Check in with your doctors, people; for years I thought this was an offset of thyroid mess or depression. I can't tell you how many doctors, different antidepressants, vitamins, or frustrations have been lived through, not to my benefit. I ended up at a nutjob pill-pushing psychiatrist who had me on Ambien, clonozapam, Prozac and Effexor all at once. Many doctors have tried different combinations of meds that included Trazodone, Lexapro, more, less, morning, night, and get out of the house more. And now this diagnosis that gave me such vitality the day after; I felt years younger, saner, smarter and like the me I remember again. Hope, o hope, that this is a solution towards a life with fewer panic attacks, thank you.

Thursday cannot come soon enough, there are five nights left to sleep before the doctor, and then how many more before the treatment is implemented? My shelf has been cleared, the electrical outlet awaits, the anticipation has me waiting my turn. Sleep well.

Writer's Market

Sent away for the newest Writer's Market book, which tells one how to get work published. Never submitted anything outside of college publications, wonder if the essay style I seem able to produce is worth anything outside of therapeutic rambling. Something new to try, either way.

Currently I am holding my breath for the diagnostic news on official paper from the physicians involved. The sleep center said the work was sent to my personal phys, whose office said they hadn't received it yet who could care less that my oxygen deprived brain is fizzing less than the remnants of three o'clock in the morning last call tonic and vodka with long-gone ice on the counter of that bar we used to go to in the seventies before heading out to a Your Host breakfast and bothering waitresses with stupid drunken ordering but leaving generous tips. I was going through an anti-religious backlash back then, with images that I was having a good time.

Really, this is a short post of rant about wanting results only because it feels like I have been in a closet with Grandma's winter coats muffling me. If this diagnosis falls through, it will only cause me to push forward harder, for there has been an experience of brightness caused by the night treatment during the polysomnography. Sorry this is boring. I am whining perhaps, but do not underestimate the excitement I have within. Life, breath, oxygen, ahead.

Waking the Dull

Nothing new under the sun, kids, but to me this is hot pancakes and a side of hash browns. Having talked to various doctors over the years about 1) Losing my mind 2) Becoming literally lost and 3) Having to look up how much rent I pay each month cause god knows I don't remember, my primary doc wrote a script for a sleep study, to see if I have sleep apnea.

So what, you snore, tell us something we and people in a five mile radius around the home address don't already know. I wake up feeling crappy, but I thought that was just my life mixed with thyroid hijinks and depression. Folks, I ended up in Tonawanda last weekend when headed to North Buffalo, my college life is a mess--don't ask, I'm working it out-- and when I couldn't find the car in the parking lot, there was a brief but real sensation that aliens had dropped me off at the grocery for eggs and milk. I waltz in fog, reread text repeatedly and still don't know what they want, and have been getting panic attacks like squirrels get acorns. Thought I was going down the long drain of Mom Goes Out For A Little While. And the doctor finally looks at me and asks "How do you sleep?"

Well I wake only once a night but drift off quickly if there hasn't been chocolate or coffee after five p.m., but staggering out of the sack takes a team of horses and a whip. (I have five whips, they all say "meow"). "You don't feel refreshed? You don't feel ready to go?" Never. Rarely. Only if someone under the age of twelve is throwing up and needs help. I call the number on the prescription for arrangements of a sleep study, and wish it were that very day for I see a sail on the horizon which may provide answers and relief of my continuous lack of memory, energy, and well, come see my laundry pile, I only charge a nickel a look. Also, so often, people talk to me and it translates into gibberish. I have no idea what they are saying. Sometimes I ask "What?" but mostly I nod. Sure. Sounds good. I can read body language exceptionally well, having learned to duck when younger, and this helps. What? PAYATTENTIONWHENI'MTALKINGTOYOU, duck, nod.

So now I'm back at home, sitting up with a bland headache from who knows, but I am alert, aware, and look, don't laugh, but I am recognizing objects in my line of vision. I can see everything clearly and I know it's a cup, a paper, a book and not just a jumble on the table. This snowstorm of confusion has existed for a long, long time, I thought it was just side effects or slow decomposition of my inner self. Yucky, but one puts one foot in front of the other and keeps moving in spite of it.

I arrived at Millard Gates almost an hour early just to make sure I got there, and sat in a soggy waiting room reading the last issue of Birds and Blooms magazine while the ceiling dripped into a wastebasket. The technician swooped efficiently in and escorted me to a room, a nice room with a wooden bed, Colonial style. Like Grandma's. She had me watch a video on the process and then stuck me up with paste on my legs, neck, chest and scalp into which nodes were attached. I was wired like a Christmas tree. Warm heart, cold hands that one. No nonsense. Recently moved back with her girls from Florida. Bands around chest and abdomen would measure breathing; wires kept track of eye movement, leg jerks and brain activity. Oxygen monitor on a pinky. Sleep now, without a mask, we'll see how you do.

Two a.m. She woke me to say that a mask would be applied and strapped a head harness which held a breathing apparatus similar to a jet pilot's over my face. Velcro straps fitted it tightly and the machine began to whoosh gently. Odd sensation, it felt like breathing on a windy day. The mask whistled like a tea kettle until it was prodded into a quiet simmer, and I don't know if I slept, it seemed like I was awake behind my eyes but there were images, colors, cartoons in the space between my lids and my brain. A vast plain opened before me while I was waiting to sleep and there were purple mountains, cities, cartoon cats with arched eyebrows, waves of color. This happened when I was a small child also, this panorama of figures sometimes blinking like a fading flash or roiling into new shapes, beads, ideas. I enjoyed the show.

People checked on me throughout the night, I asked to be unplugged once to use the facilities, and all went well until wake up at five a.m. I was unhooked, dressed, and thank youed by quarter to six in the morning and let me tell you, curiously refreshed. Bright. Alert. A younger moi. The doctor will get me the results in five to ten days. I have to soak the glue out of my hair with warm water before shampooing, and am still picking small squares of gauze out of my scalp. The plastic smell of the tubing and mask lingers, and I worry how the cats will take to the invasive equipment over my face at night. I will miss burrowing into Kai's fur in the dark hours, but after all, perhaps the darker ones will dissipate with the oxygen getting to where needed. I want my own CPAP machine. Yesterday, please.

It is cold out there, this early February, so I hope you are as warm as I luckily am. Oh, I know I am lucky; there is heat, water, and safety within the walls and sleep. Peaceful, invigorating sleep. Even only after four hours where I was really asleep, there is a newness and and ability to process surroundings that I haven't had in years. Melt, thou pounds, with the renewed physical plant now whole and fed with oxygen. Revive, o brain, and wield APA referencing in timely, accurate fashion. Remember, ye internal calendar, and place dates and appointments in the fore. It is not a small hope. You breathe deeply; inhale, raise the bed, arise clear and freshened, ready to beat a b'ar to the honey tree. Talk to you soon, with love.