CPAP Madness

Today I met my new sleep doctor. (I’ve noticed that the older I get the more specialists I have working, trying to keep me fit. This year alone I have seen the dermatologist, the plastic surgeon, the oral surgeon, the dentist, the sleep doctor, the gynecologist, and the general practioner.) My new sleep doctor is really cool. He is easy to talk to and funny and actually put in some time trying to figure out a good solution to my sleep problem. He also took the time to read through my sleep study with me. I was astonished to see the results. It was worse than I even realized. He told me that the apnea that I had during this test was severe. It turns out that on average, in one hour, I was having 126 sleep events. This basically means that I was waking up, on average, every 47 seconds. No wonder I was so tired when I was pregnant. Hopefully, the apnea is better now that I am no longer pregnant, but it is still bad. So, I am getting a new CPAP machine, one that just goes in my nose. It has a chip that records the pressures used to keep my throat open all night long. In four weeks I will go back to the doctor and he will download the results. Hopefully, all will be well.

My Morning Mess

This morning Bronwen woke up at 4:55am. That is totally unacceptable. I tried to ignore her crying for a while, but eventually, Dan got up and brought her into our bed. I usually don’t like having her in the bed with us because if she is awake she will poke me in the face repeatedly until I finally wake up. This morning was different though. She snuggled in between us a fell asleep, for about 90 minutes. At 6:30 she got out of bed and left the bedroom. Dan put the baby-gate up in the doorway leading to the kitchen and crawled back into bed. We promptly fell back asleep.

When the alarm went off at 7:00am I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room, calling for Bronwen. I realized that we had slept for 30 minutes while she was wandering around and I was nervous. What disaster would be awaiting me in the next room?

“Bronwen? What are you doing?” I called to her. A little voice, choked with a pacifier responded from the living room,

“Bwook.”

She held up a magazine and smiled.

“Oh, you’re reading a book. Very good then,” and I dragged myself into the shower.

After a quick shower I opened the bathroom door to find Bronwen dragging her little chair across the room towards the coffee table. I surreptitiously watched her from around the corner while she worked her chair up over the carpet, around the kids bike and up to the table next to the magazines. It was then she sensed me watching and looked up. I jumped out at her and smiled. She smiled back. She then leaned down behind the table, and lifted her arm into the air and started to sprinkle something on the floor? Sand? What is that?

I walked over to her to find a mess of previously undiscovered proportions. Bronwen had the salt bowl on the floor. Salt was EVERYWHERE! Dan’s shoes were full of salt, salt mingled with the magazines on the table, salt melted in the pool of water Bronwen had dumped on the floor, salt was on the couch, salt was stuck to her feet and hands. Salt stuck to her chair. I grabbed the near empty salt bowl and half empty cup of water and returned them to higher ground in the kitchen. I removed Bronwen from the scene and set her up with melon for breakfast while I went back to the bathroom to get ready. I did not clean up the mess, I am sure it is still there. I just couldn’t deal with it this morning.

A few minutes later, Bronwen, munching on a cube of melon walked into the bathroom. It was then that I discovered, to my horror, that her mouth was caked with salt.

“Were you eating salt?” I shouted at her in disbelief.

“Gurg,” was all she replied.

Shitake Kickers Rock

There is so much going on in my life right now, it is hard to keep it all straight. I passed the Foreign Service exam and have scheduled my oral assessment, which will be held in Washington DC for April 21st. I am very much looking forward to it. If all goes well, I will be one step closer as of May, to becoming a Foreign Service Officer, ready to go out and serve my country!

Besides the FS, there are really two things that I am obsessed with right now. First, the West Wing. Yes, I know, once again I am behind the times, but this show is freakin great. The problem is that I can’t get to bed on time, because I can’t turn off the tv.

The second new and exciting thing I am doing is playing Kickball. I joined the company kickball team. We are called the Shitake Kickers and our t-shirts are awesome. I will take a picture and post it when the t-shirts come in.

I haven’t played kickball since middle school, but I still remember that it was my favorite game to play in gym class. I cannot wait to get out on the field and regress back to 6th grade. I think I am going to be pretty good. Hopefully, I won’t injure myself!

Okay Mr Cavin, Here's Your Update

So I went to the oral surgeon on Monday. He was strikingly handsome, but in a Norman Rockwell kind of way. He had a 1950s style of hair cut, cut long on the top and brushed back. And he had a very nice face.

I has fallen asleep in the chair as he had kept me waiting 30 minutes, and when I woke up there he was standing in the afternoon sunlight.

He examined the growth and concluded a number of things:
1. It is probably viral, sort of like a wart. I told him that I had recently had a wart on my finger and I had chewed on it (I didn't know warts spread!) and he said that it could have got there that way.
2. It is too small to create any blockage that might contribute to my sleep apnea. Damn!
3. Since I have sleep apnea the surgery to remove it is going to be a little more intense, meaning, full anesthesia, a tube down my throat to help me breath and all that. Yuck.
4. I should have it removed as it could cause problems later on.

I am going to meet with a new sleep doctor at the end of march. We are going to discuss surgery options then, and if we decided to have surgery, we will remove the wart at the same time. If not, I will have to go in sometime this spring and have it removed.

So there is the update. And the moral of the story is don't chew on your warts or they might spread to you uvula.