I make rude noises at my life. It doesn’t get to make rude noises at me. Usually.
So I mentioned last time (ooh, two posts in August!) that I might talk about why I’m feeling better. Then August kind of fell on me like a wall or maybe a small moon dropped on my head and uh…yeah.
I’ve worked in schools for more than twenty years now. If there’s one thing you would think I would know, it’s that I’m not doing a blasted thing in late July/early August that I don’t have to do to stay alive and housed. Usually I refer to it as trying to surf a tsunami–if you can stay on top of it and don’t get smashed into a skyscraper, you will theoretically be fine. But it’s a big if. And you still have to stick the landing. (I’ve never actually surfed. I’m sure it shows.)
Anyway. I have done better than usual this year at riding the wave, as evidenced by my surfacing before the end of August (yeah, this metaphor is falling apart all over the place. Sorry.) But while I’m actually in/on the wave, all my attention has to go there.
ANYWAY. The reason I’ve been feeling more energetic and able to do things is apparently a combination of two things–an anti-depressant I debated for literal years before asking for, and a BIPAP machine.
Did y’all know it was possible to sleep almost all the way through the night? The best I’ve done so far is only waking up once, but I haven’t even had the machine a month yet, so I may actually manage to cut out the 3 a.m. wakeup too.
Now look. I know I should have suspected sleep apnea due to my weight and the fact that I snore. But I wasn’t tired. I was depressed, and had no energy, but I rarely napped during the day. I didn’t find it hard to get out of bed, once I decided I did indeed have to do it. I never woke up gasping, I just woke up.
But I did have AFib. Which, apparently, is commonly triggered by sleep apnea. I didn’t know that! My cardiologist presumably knew that, but it didn’t occur to him to test me. It was his NP (bless her!) that suggested we should at least check even though I didn’t have the most common symptoms.
Hey, whattaya know. There’s a reason for all this!
Who, me? Bitter that it took over a year of trying to get the AFIB figured out to get this far? Nawwww…
So anyway. BIPAP machine.
The first night with my bipap was both hope and worry. Would it make anything better? Would it make everything better? Would I wake up in the morning with the writing career I hoped for, and happy healthy kids, and a slightly bigger house?
I didn’t have the masked snapped together properly, apparently. When I turn the machine on, it is set to “ramp” for 45 minutes–basically just blow air at no increased pressure, so the person unused to the contraption can fall asleep before things get weirder. But I didn’t have the mask snapped together properly, as I said, so when it kicked into high it was loud and startled me awake and it was dark and I was confused and there was air blowing everywhere… I thought maybe that was how it was supposed to work, so I tried to sleep through it. No chance. Then I took the mask off, and it fell apart, and I thought I’d broken it.
I cried. Just for a minute, then I tried to put it back together, and it snapped right in. And I remembered there’s a mask check function on the machine, so I awkwardly in the dark found that, tried it, found I was all right, and tried again.
That first night’s sleep was Not Good. But the next day, I did have more… I don’t want to call it energy, but maybe a little more brain power? I also had a headache all day. One of those stinging, back of the head things that didn’t budge no matter what I threw at it, sigh.
Things got better after that. We’ve actually made it to life-changing, and I’m still just in the dialing-it-in stage. For instance, I started off with a nasal mask, which works great for me most of the time because I tend to breathe through my nose. But sometimes…well, I don’t.
Last week I went to the marvelous respiratory therapist and got a “full face” mask to try. They are not full face, they cover the nose and the mouth only, but anyway.
I put it on half an hour before I went lights out. It felt great! It worked fine. But I made sure to have my old mask in reach just in case.
“Just in case” occurred at 3 a.m. when I woke up to my new mask making fart noises on my face.
Turns out the the mask could handle the ramp pressure, but when we hit the full pressure of the therapy, the silicone padding started flapping. The more it flapped, the looser it got, until I woke up to rude noises on my face. I couldn’t tighten the mask enough to make it stop without hurting my face. So back to the nasal mask I went. At least I’m getting pretty adept at changing the masks in the dark now!
So anyway.
Nuts to you, life. We shall carry on.