I’d like a #2 CPAP and a chocolate dip cone to go with that sleep apnea, please.

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After the second longest night of the last year I need to capture some of the fun for my readers. And I’d like to plead with you to take this seriously. If you have sleep apnea you need to get it treated. And if the doctors tell you to wear a CPAP, DON’T FIGHT THEM! I have a dear friend who’s paying the price for that right now.

I’ve used a CPAP (Constant Positive Airway Pressure) machine for a long time to treat my sleep apnea. It’s a device that helps people with sleep apnea breathe during the night. It’s essentially a small compressor with a humidifier attached. A six foot length of hose attaches it to a face mask of some sort. I use one that fits over the head and … well, it plugs my nose and forces air in during the sleep hours.

This is a huge improvement over the last one I had, which was like wearing a soapdish strapped over your nose all night. And, the CPAP I recently retired was about 1/10 as noisy as the original one I was given years ago. So, steady improvement over the last 15 years to be sure. And it’s kept me alive. But more of that at the end.

My apnea seemed to be getting worse so I went to see the doctor. He scheduled a new sleep study for me to determine where I was in my condition. And, so I went. This video shows a bit of what it’s like, but unlike Shaq, I went to them, they didn’t come to me.

As I mentioned in a previous post, they have you come in to the sleep center and wire you up six ways from Tuesday to monitor almost every physiological change in your sleep patterns. And then they ask you to go to sleep. Without your CPAP. That scared me. I couldn’t fall asleep because I knew it was a bad thing to sleep without it on. So, after about 1.5 hours of tossing and turning I gave up and asked to put on the CPAP. Nope, I was told to take a sleeping pill and tough it out, because they needed to actually see me stop breathing before they could continue the study.

I agree. That sounds nuts. But I played along. Took the Ambien and was out cold in 30 minutes. And wide awake again shortly afterwards when they woke me up to have me wear the CPAP. Seems I have sleep apnea… go figure.

For the rest of the night the self adjusting CPAP ranged up and down in pressure to determine what the proper level was for a bloated middle-aged guy with a beard. After a very short (it seemed) night of uncomfortable sleep, and a very long night in every other respect, I got up and went home. Yes, I had apnea still and because I had done the study I was eligible for a new CPAP (The old one was about 7 years old, past its “freshness date” by a bit.)

I got the new CPAP the day before I left for Dallas and it sat in my dining room until last night. It was time.

And thus the second worst night’s sleep in the past year. Why? Because they’ve changed the technology of the device and it was a completely different feeling than what I’d grown accustomed to over the past fifteen years. Very different.

For starters the machine doesn’t fight you when you exhale. The device senses your exhalation and quits forcing air into your schnozz while you get rid of the used breath. It then gently pushes air in. A different sensation, a different sound. It’s still quiet, but you get so used to that constant pressure from the first machines that it seems like the machine has failed when you try this model (and, yes, I know it’s more of a bilevel machine than a CPAP but it’s my blog and I can be ignorant if I want.)

I’ll bet it took me 2 hours to fall asleep. Partly that’s because I was doing the night-to-day changeover, but partly because it just felt so weird. Once I fell asleep I woke up frequently. That “it doesn’t feel right” sensation that the new mechanism gave me, versus the horrible feeling of waking from sleep apnea.

I think it is doing the work needed. I don’t feel drowsy today and no headaches (two major signs of sleep apnea in your life.) I will give it a few more nights to see how it goes before I start whining to the provider about my need for more pressure/a lollipop, etc. But it does feel really strange. And it was the second worst night of sleep this year.

I’ve had sleep apnea since I was skinny. But we just called it “loud snoring” back then. It impacts fat guys like me more than skinny guys. But in my case the throat structure that gave me a “golden voice” and allowed me to break into voice over work was the other side of the coin of sleep apnea. Basically your throat closes while you sleep and it stops your breathing. Hundreds of times a night sometimes.

That makes it hard on your heart, causes blood pressure problems, and makes you a narcoleptic freak who falls asleep at stop signs if untreated. (Yup, I can vouch for that.) It’s not a good thing to have. So, if you have sleep apnea, or snore really loudly and wake up a lot, get yourself checked. A great place to start is by clicking on this link and seeing what the experts have to say. It might save your life.

Oh, and if you think you don’t snore, ask the people close to you. You might just find out that you are a real pain. You never know if you snore – you’re asleep, goofy. It took me years to get that through my thick skull (yeah, I was stupid. Sorry, Honey, I should have listened sooner.) If they tell you that you do snore, ask about abrupt breathing or the snoring stopping and starting. If they have detected that, and you have high blood pressure or other cardiovascular disease, memory problems, weight gain, impotence, headaches, or extreme drowsiness you are a candidate for a sleep doctor. Do you fall asleep when your focus is not needed? Ever doze off at the wheel? Fall asleep talking to someone? Yup, go see the doctor.

This post is not completely light-hearted. Sleep apnea kills people. Stroke, heart attack, falling asleep at the wheel. It factors in to all of those causes of death. One of my best friends is at the neurologist today to find out what is causing the seizures he suffers from. Sleep apnea is a part of that picture.

So, enough preaching on the topic. Please take it seriously and get treatment if you have the symptoms. I’d like to see you around for a long time. I need the readers. (and, while you’re at it, head up to the upper right side of this page and subscribe! It is free, after all.)

Happy Birthday, Jean. (updated)

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Photo Credit: http://www.twincities.com

We held a party at work last night in honor of our friend Jean. Jean had her birthday on Friday and we knew it was something we needed to honor.

Jean has worked with our company for over 35 years. She just had her anniversary celebration a few weeks ago. I didn’t get a chance to go, I was wired up with electrodes for a sleep study. But I can proudly say I helped plan the menu. She picked all sorts of great things from Mayslack’s in Northeast Minneapolis. Over the past year or two we’ve gotten their roast beef sandwiches and onion rings on occasion. She liked the food and since the company was throwing her a party she got her choice of eats. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to attend. But she saved me a piece of carrot cake and it was there for me a few days later when I came back to work. Jean was that kind of woman – looking out for her friends.

Yes, was. Jean was killed in a traffic accident on Friday morning. After a long week of work she left to visit her family in Iowa. Right around sunrise she ran a stop sign and was killed by a truck. I feel badly for the truck driver. It wasn’t his fault but that’s a hard thing to live with in the end. Nobody else was hurt in the accident, Jean was alone in the car.

And that was her birthday – she was born into the Kingdom of Heaven that morning right around Sonrise.

And so we celebrated last night. Everyone on our shift has a good heart. Some have stronger faith than others, some kind of at the edges of believing. Some still seeking. But all of them good people. And we wanted to say goodbye to a friend. Like all families we’re a bit dysfunctional. Sometimes we love each other and sometimes we squabble. But we were unanimous in our affection for Jean. So the group, small enough to count on two hands, gathered in the dark of the night to talk about a friend and remember her.

Midnight shifters are a different group. Kind of stand-offish, a bit contemptuous of the “day-weasels,” and certainly sleep deprived. But most of all we are we. It’s a family. We don’t just work together like most people. It’s hard to explain to day workers but the crew that comes in night after night and gets the heavy maintenance done is a close knit group. We often have coworkers on the day shift we’ve never met. They’re just names on the department phone list even after years of having the same bosses. Most of us have worked the shift for years out of preference. We actually bid to the shift. Our friends are on the shift. We don’t hit the bars after work (well, most of us don’t) or go bowling. But our lives are intertwined because of the social isolation and unique nature of our jobs.

We had hot-dogs, Polish sausage, blue corn tortilla chips, chili, and all the fixings. We cooked it in crock pots. Jean would have liked that: she introduced us to crock pot liners. And she was a good cook. Whenever we had a food night she’d really go out of her way to bring something special. There were no store-bought cupcakes from Jean. It was always top-shelf stuff she made herself. For desert we had birthday cake because while we won’t see Jean again on this Earth, we wanted to celebrate her life and her arrival in Heaven. During the night her friends and coworkers for the past three decades cleaned up her cube. They lovingly packed up her possessions and separated the work stuff from the personal stuff.

Jean leaves behind kids and grand kids. And at least one coworker who’s monitor isn’t working so well this morning. The darned thing is all blurry and it’s making my nose run.

I’m going to time this to post on Monday in the evening so that all of her coworkers will have had a chance to find out the news before this goes public. God speed, Jean. We love you and will miss you.

I know it had to be pithy…

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But darned if I can remember what it was I wanted to say. That’s what happens when you start reading about the new plugins and widgets that WordPress has available for you. I’m like a squirrel with a shiny dime in front of me – mesmerized.

But, as long as I’m babbling I had a revelation this morning about old dogs. My friend Edzell is a very senior citizen. His walk is wobbly, he has poor vision, deaf as a post … kind of sounds like me for the first twenty minutes of each day.

Seriously, he’s having a tough time navigating. But he’s such a good friend, and such a sweet soul that it’s hard to get mad at him for delaying his entry to the room because the light level is different, or the flooring is slick. His most annoying flaw is that he’s always been a pain about going up the back steps. Dawdles and stares at you like his greatest hope is that you’ll go away and just let him stay outside for the rest of the day. And once he starts up the steps it can take him five minutes to make the journey. Three or four false starts that require a trip to the bottom of the stairs can now be called the norm.

This morning I realized that he doesn’t do it to make me nuts. He does it because his body has never been designed to do stairs. God hadn’t put that into his model when construction began. He doesn’t do well on stairs. He’s fearful and it is hard when you’re a big dog with balance problems. I get it now. I just have to remember to be patient and love him more. Going down the steps and standing next to him helps. He’s not worried about falling down the stairs if you do that for him.

I hereby resolve to do that for my friend. Rain or shine, I will patiently wait for him or go down the stairs to help him up said stairs. Because I fear I won’t be looking out into the yard for him much longer. And that will be much harder to take than a short wait for the arrival of a cherished friend.

Book review – An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier by Karl Bacon

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Full disclosure is in order: I met Karl Bacon (the author of this book) at the American Christian Fiction Writer’s conference in Dallas. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable weekend with Karl and my good friend Larry W. Timm. I now consider Karl to be a good friend as well. He’s a marvelous man with a heart for Christian writing and an immense depth of character.

I was intrigued not because of my love for history, nor for my fascination with how people I meet in the Christian writing world match up to their books. (It has been my experience that the books are a pretty good reflection of the man or woman. You can see that their hopes and wishes are in the pages as much as they are in their face as you talk with them in person.) No, my interest was because of Larry’s effusive praise and solemn reflection on the book. It had touched him deeply.

And, I confess, An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier has had the same impact on me. I just finished the book within the last hour. It as an absolutely haunting, beautiful, skillfully written, and loving account of a man’s journey through war and its aftermath. Karl has captured the Civil War at a new level. I could taste the dust on the march. I feared the next barrage of musket fire. I knew the loss of comrades. And it all came from this talented man’s imagination and understanding of human nature.

Karl has written a thoroughly Christian journey in his pages. Michael Palmer is the main character and we see him grow from green recruit to … well, read the book.

It is a book of wounding and salvation. There is no way that a thoughtful man or woman can read this book and not be brought to the brink of tears. It is that beautiful. I am eagerly awaiting Karl’s next book.

Maybe review is not the word for this post. Perhaps “Fanboy-mancrush” would be in order? Or, “Oh, I wish I could write that well” might sum it up.

I’ve read well over 5000 books in my life and it’s safe to say that this book is in the top 20. I think Karl will forgive me for saying that it’s a lovely and elegant read. There is a fair amount of violence in the book, but then you would expect that in reading about a conflict that tore our nation asunder. Head over to Amazon and get a copy today. You won’t regret it.

Phone Ministry.

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I wrote a little bit about being at KTIS radio for the fall fundraiser the other day. It was nice, but I didn’t feel like I’d earned my lunch when I left.

So, I went back for the final four hours on Friday morning. I’m really glad I did.

During the four hours I was on the phone I had the chance to go back about 15 years to my call center days. I have actually done call center work on and off since high school, but for serious inbound calls my time goes back to being a representative with USWEST in the 1990’s. The biggest difference on Friday was that not one person said a harsh word to me. Being in the collections department of a phone company you learn new words and combinations of words even if you were a sailor. (It might, in fact, have been good training to be a sailor given some of the interesting suggestions people made to me in that job.)

Friday was blessed. I got to talk to wonderful people. Lonely people who just wanted a voice to pray with, people with not much money who wanted to do what they could to support the Ministry of Northwestern College and the radio station. Some folks were calling to express their love for the station with large gifts. More than once I heard someone talking about how they wanted to share the gifts God have given them with the station because it played such an important part in their life. Others could only do a little but needed to thank someone for the station being there 24×7 for them. I don’t think many people realize how important that voice in the middle of the night is when the walls are closing in and lonliness and depression crowd out all but the smallest speck of light. That light is KTIS beaming into their lives and keeping the hope of dawn in front of them.

I had more than one person increase their donation while we were on the phone. One man doubled his donation “just because God has been good to me and I love Him.” Awesome.

But the personal high of the day was the opportunity to pray with so many people I didn’t know on a personal level. It made me think of the best days I ever had as a Deacon. I was sitting in a chair with a phone headset on, but in my heart I was down on my knees in front of God, holding the hand of the person on the othe end of the line. I was pouring out my heart and lifting them up to God. And it was blessed and wonderful.

I left the station walking on the clouds. I had one of those mornings where the Holy Spirit had reached down and touched me personally. I knew Grace.

And all in the space of four hours just talking to listeners.

Thank you, Jason, Rich, Julene, all the air personalities, all of my other friends at KTIS who welcomed me into the fold to take calls this week. You were gracious and kind and fed not just my stomach but my soul by allowing me to participate.