100 Hours Under the Mask

I am guardedly optimistic that using the CPAP machine is doing something positive for my sleep. The problem continues to be one of adjusting to the mask throughout the night. And one more things (as Steve Jobs will NOT be saying at the Macworld Expo this year): I am taking a drug called Lasix as part of my daily pharmacological cocktail. Its job is to keep the fluids from building up inside me, and the means by which it does its job is my making my bladder very active. Some folks report a lessening of nocturnal bladder emptying, but Lasix doesn’t allow for that.

As a matter of fact, one day I realized that the Very Smart People who give names to drugs have named every pill I take in this pseudo-Nordic ur-code. Imagine the guy who says “Imagine a world where . . . ” with the big rumbly voice on the movie trailers saying “I AM”, followed by the name of a drug you might be taking and closing the sentence with “RULER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

OK, ready, everyone?

“I AM LASIX, RULER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

“I AM COREG, RULER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

“I AM ALDACTONE, RULER OF THE UNIVERSE!”

Of course, the one that doesn’t work in my pharmacopia is BABY ASPIRIN.

Anyway, sometimes it can be a struggle when I awaken with an urgent need caused by LASIX, RULER OF HE UNIVERSE, but I’m groggy and under the mask. The wind is howling under that mask as I struggle to disengage myself from the tubes which tether me to an 8 foot radius around the TV table next to the bed where my CPAP sits. No accidents to report, but plenty of comedic possibilities.

I’m just thankful they’re all pills. When all of this cardiac excitement started back in May I had to have Jan give me a shot of something called Lovenox (I AM LOVENOX . . . ) which had to be administered by my long-suffering spouse my means of shots to the abdominal wall, 3 times a day. It MUST be love when you have to do that to your partner.

Getting back to CPAP for just a second, I am sleeping deeper, the Lasix urges notwithstanding. I even take naps with the machine on.

And there’s a funny name for those of us who sleep under masks. We are called Hoseheads.

24 Hours on the Clock

I’ve had three nights under the mask of my new CPAP machine, and the good news is I’m getting used to the mask. I have lowered the frequency of throwing off the mask at night to twice. That’s progress.

More importantly, I seem to be deriving some benefit from the CPAP already. I’m not waking up to use the bathroom as much as I was. Once I get to sleep--for that’s the struggle still--I’m out for the duration. Certain skin problems seem to be lessening. And on the other side of the ledger, I am quite a bit more alert and awake in the course of the day, notwithstanding my the need for a nap, courtesy of blood thinners prescribed to lower my blood pressure and metabolic rate.

What does all this have to do with the rebirth of the band? I’m trying desperately to get myself another stream of steam to power me through getting the demo done. My experience tells me that I’ll need all the energy I can summon to get to the point where I’ve got a product in hand to sell the band, and I was not heading in that direction before the machine arrived.

For the record, I survived a heart attack in May of 2008, soon after I got back home from nearly 6 months on QE2. I had an ICD installed in June, 2008.

I’m taking Lasix, Coreg, Aldactone, Digoxin, Coumadin, Crestor, Adacan, and Baby Aspirin. I nap twice a day, and the sleep study said I wasn’t doing enough sleeping when I was asleep.

If the CPAP machine can somehow break this cycle, it’ll be well worth it.

Keeping up with Current Trends

If there’s any doubt that I am a with-it sort of guy, I submit that last night I slept with a CPAP mask on my face. I know what you’re thinking. No I don’t really but I like the phrase.

It turns out that two of my younger siblings--Cindy and Jimmy--have been sleeping with these machines for years now for treatment of sleep apnea. My brother specifically was having episodes of the arrhythmia called afib, which I had back in the summer, after my ICD was installed. I didn’t want to get afib again. The doctors conk me out and use my ICD to jump start my heart. Traumatic, but not particularly serious. The doctors look at it as a boat payment, and I can hardly blame them. Anyway, as I came out of the anesthetic I promised I’d look into what it would take to avoid the reappearance of afib, and I was pretty surprised when my brother, who is usually talkative about his health challenges, had withheld this condition and its treatment. His doctor suggested a sleep study that might determine if apnea was causing his afib. And it looks like it was.

Being the slave to fashion that I am, once I knew that Jimmy had solved a problem I was having with a sleep study (and Cindy too, although she wasn’t specifically having arrhythmia) I decided to talk to my cardiologist about a sleep study.

Hold on a minute here and ask yourself how things have come to the point that I type “my cardiologist” like he was a personal attachment, like “my Corgi mix” or “My Opperman piccolo.” Well, money is a wonderful thing, and, through our insurance, we have been shoveling quite a lot of it his way, so I’ll ask your pardon if I feel a little bit of ownership. He’s quite a nice guy with a very dark sense of humor, actually.

So he set up a sleep study on one of the night that McCain and Obama had their first debate. In due time, they sent the results to my cardiologist (there it is again), and determined that I was having 39 episodes of blockage resulting in lack of oxygen per hour.

They requested another sleep study to fit me with a machine, and in due time it was done. Finally they contacted my cardiologist’s office and I went in for a fitting yesterday.

I’ve been following blogs and other web pages about personal experiences with CPAP, and I am looking forward to feeling the wonderous effects of this machine. But I’ve only slept with it one night, and I spent most of that night waiting for the wonderous effects to fall on me and wrestling with the mask. I had fun terrifying my dogs and my spouse who made the mistake of falling asleep on the couch while I was experimenting with fit.

What I’m hoping is I’ll have some extra energy to undertake the task of putting the band back together. That’ll be worth the effort.