Today I had a surreal experience I don’t expect will be repeated any time soon.

Still living on Central Standard Time, woke up at 6:30 a.m. and showed up at the gym too early for it to be open.

ZOMG!  I assumed my gym was open early on the weekends just like it is during the week, but evidently that isn’t true.

There should have been a photo crew to record this rare and, dare I say it, unprecedented event!

I guess they can’t all be gems.

I guess I had it coming.  My first two travel days on this work trip were letter-perfect.  Empty planes, good seats, early arrivals, rental cars right in the terminals, the whole enchilada.

Not so much yesterday.

After two weeks of extreme cold and snow, Madison did its part to make my exit special by having an actual ice storm the night before I left.  So my day began in 10 degree weather, scraping ice off of every glass surface of my rental car.  And let me tell you, this was tough ice.  Getting it off was like a trip to the gym in terms of effort and calories expended.

Okay, so I made it through that hurdle.  Got to the airport and attempted to check in at the Delta self-serve kiosk.  I’m used to these, so there should have been no problem.  And there wasn’t until the point where I paid to check my excess (that is to say, my ONE) bag.  The machine spit out my receipt and that was that.  No mention of where to actually take my bag.  No attendant behind the counter (although it was marked OPEN).  No clue whatsoever.

Thanks, Delta!  I guess you’re ready when I am because you don’t feel bothered to actually have to DO anything to GET ready, huh?

Next highlight of the day:  The airport security goons broke my CPAP machine.  Thanks, TSA!!

Next:  Horrible coach seat with my knees crammed into the seat above me.  This situation was made extra-special when the woman in front of me leaned her seat back, leaving me without even enough room to hold a book in front of my face.  Thanks, Airbus!

Final insult:  The cab ride to Apria Healthcare (to get the CPAP fixed) and then home was one of those times when you just find yourself in the seventh circle of Hell, LA-traffic-wise.

On the bright side, the machine is working.  I talked the woman in front of me into moving her seat up (I bought her drinks to say thank you), and I got home safe.

So there.

Turns out I like the orange food.

Carrots.  Peppers.  Oranges.  Dreamsicles.

Exception:  Sweet potatoes.

Discuss?

So in early September, I began using the CPAP machine to treat my severe sleep apnea.  It’s a mask that blows air up into my head while I sleep.

For the last several years . . . okay, let’s be honest . . .for at least ten years, I have been falling asleep during movies.  During GOOD movies!  I saw Wall E in the theaters twice and fell asleep both times!  And it’s a great movie!

I would get sleep at work.  This is not good in my line of work.  As an overpriced independent contractor, I need to be a movie star every day I show up at a client’s site.  And it’s difficult to be a movie star while you are nodding off at your desk.  In 2007 I briefly fell asleep while teaching a class.  [Don’t tell anyone this.]

I would wake up exhausted, because I was getting no good quality sleep whatsoever.  On my days off I’d wake up, have breakfast, and want to do nothing more than go back to bed.

I’d fall asleep while playing World of Warcraft online with my friends.  I would fall asleep during conversations.

In 2007 I totaled my car by, you guessed it, falling asleep behind the wheel.  I’m quite ashamed of this fact, and I’m very lucky that no one was hurt.  Besides that, I lost a beloved, economical, paid-off car that was in flawless shape and would have lasted me many more years.  (At Jiffy Lube the guys would say things like, “I will die before your car dies.”)

So I was counting on the CPAP machine to help me.  And I was not disappointed.  What was remarkable was the speed at which it dispatched my problem.
Rarely in my life have I had a big problem that was solved so instantly.

From the first night on the machine, my life changed for the better.  Overnight.

I no longer fall asleep during movies.  Even during boring French ones.  I no longer fall asleep at work.  I no longer get sleepy behind the wheel.

I get more work done.  I’m worth more at work.  I get more books read, because I can stay conscious to read them.

I am now the John the Baptist of CPAP technology.  I preach its virtues to every person I meet who suspects he/she may have apnea.

While giddily describing all of this to my doctor, he summed it up perfectly:  “Yeah, it’s nice to get a little oxygen to the brain, huh?”

COMING NEXT:  All I Want For Christmas is Some Hemoglobin

I’m.  Too Sexy For My Bed.
I’ve been terribly remiss about following up on my fascinating health saga this fall, mostly because I’ve been feeling so terrific I’ve been doing stuff instead of writing about it in my blog.  Shame on me!

My sleep study in August made it clear that I had severe sleep apnea (duh).  I was ceasing breathing over 100 times per hour.  Yikes!

Going into it, my worry wasn’t was that I would get that diagnosis (that’s what I expected to happen).  My concern was that I would have trouble with the mask and the CPAP machine.

Well my anxiety was unfounded.  I took to the CPAP like Courtney Love to a spoon of black tar heroin.

CPAP stands for Continuous Positive Air Pressure, and it’s just that:  A mask covers your nose and pushes air up into your head.  This creates a sort of bubble which keeps the tissues in your throat open so that your breathing stays normal and you consequently fall into blissful REM sleep

It’s true that the whole mask experience takes a bit of getting used to.  In my case, it took about 30 seconds.

DO YOU WANT ME NOW?

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

The machine itself is about the size of a squared-off shoebox.  It has a built in humidifier which I have to fill every night with distilled water.  I have to take the machine with me everywhere I go.  It will go on the plane with me, and the airline cannot count it as my carry-on.  It will be examined and searched (it has bomb-convenient cavities, after all) but I can by law insist the security morons change their gloves before they touch it.

The mask will get replaced every six months.  The mask and the hose have to be regularly cleaned, as does the distilled water reservoir.

In short, the whole contraption is a big pain in the ass.

And I LOVE IT.

COMING NEXT:  Life With a Little Oxygen on the Brain!

When Barak Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009, it will be a historic moment.  Why?

Because for the first time ever, I will be older than the President of the United States.

StarkRavingRay.  Where we talk about the REAL issues.

Living in a desert makes you love the rain!

We got our first really good storm of the season today.  I always think LA is at its most beautiful in gray stormy weather.  The snowfall the mountains are getting is sorely needed.  With apologies to those living in mudslide zones, I hope the rain keeps up for days and days!

Oh, goody, On September 29 I get to go to Cedars at 6:30 in the morning and swallow a large pill which contains a tiny little movie camera. Over the following eight hours, it’ll create a fascinating and no doubt beautiful travelogue of my stomach and upper intestine.

What we’re doing is looking for other sources of bleeding that could be exacerbating my anemia. My gastroenterologist, my doctor friend Caroline and I all agree that it’s unlikely we will find anything dire down there.

The general consensus is that I’m too fat to have cancer and besides, cancer isn’t a one-symptom (anemia) disease. So I’m trying to remain calm and keep my hands inside the ride at all times.

Perhaps if they give me a copy of the movie I’ll post it here with accompanied by a pretentious, would-be-mysterious pretentious faux Pink Floyd score.

Or not.

So I go in to see the same Gastro who helped me with my anemia when we first discovered it two years ago.  I told him that taking Prilosec and staying away from caffeine, chocolate, alcohol and lying down on a full stomach wasn’t cutting it, as my hemoglobin is now 8.5 (it’s supposed to be 15). 

He said that we had to assume there was another place I was bleeding internally beside the stomach issue we already knew about.  Great.  I reminded him that I was one of those White Coat Hypertension types (scared of everything medical). 

“Here’s what we’re going to do, ” he said.  “You’re going to go into Cedars and swallow this gigantic pill with a camera inside it.  The pill will take movies of your upper intestine and we will look for problems.” 

Great.  I asked him,   “So, like in the colon, are there scary lethal things we can find there in the upper intestine?”  Of course I meant cancer. 

“It’s been two years and anemia is your only symptom and you had a mysterious weight loss [obviously], ” he said.  “Doesn’t sound like cancer.  Sounds like any one of a bunch of benign causes.” 

I informed him that that was the right answer. 

In the meantime, he tripled my iron and gave me a choice of two drugs.  Basically the choice came down to which gastroenterological discomfort would I rather have, diarrhea or constipation?  [Yay.  Welcome to my life.] 

I chose constipation.  Which, for the record, thanks to assiduous extra fiber intake, I have NOT suffered from so far.  

 For a few days I noticed no difference.  In fact, I felt terrible.  Normal walking was a struggle.  Staircases were agony.  Of course, my current gig is, uh, floor support, which, just like it sounds, requires lots of walking.  

I got really blue.  Have I waited too long? I thought.  Have I lost my chance at good health?  Am I doomed to either die young or be unhealthy and feel miserable all the time?  

Then something lovely happened.  I got out of my car Wednesday to walk to the building where I’m working, and I noticed that it wasn’t quite as hard as it had been before.  Maybe the new drug just needed a few days to kick in, I thought. I’ll wait and see tomorrow.  Maybe this is a fluke. 

Thursday morning.  Not a fluke!  I feel even better today.  So now I’m hoping that the drug is helping plug up the hole in my stomach so I can start to accumulate some decent red blood. 

Tomorrow is my birthday.  All I want is some hemoglobin.