My Mimosa Glass is Half Full

So after the emails to my cousin to figure out if my mother's CPAP machine was hers or a rental, after the phone calls to my brother's girlfriend trying to surmise where the CPAP masks might be, after the phone calls to the east coast medical provider to hunt down my mother's sleep study, after that sleep study was dug out of file storage and made it to the west coast medical supply firm and was lost--then found again, after a dozen of hours of frustration trying to get the CPAP to work, and after four visits from two respiratory therapists who provided two different styles of mask.........the night before last my mother managed to sleep with the CPAP for the first time since her lung surgery almost four years ago. It was eerily quiet when she went to bed. I sat on the couch in the dark petting the ancient cat, waiting. Waiting for yells or curses or for her tiny figure in her pink flannel pajamas to appear in the hallway signaling another night of frustration. But, no. Nothing. I finally gave up and went to bed myself.

In the morning I considered how to phrase the question: "So, how did it go last night?" No, no, no I told myself. That's way too general to yield a cogent answer. "How did the CPAP work last night?" Still too general. The answer could be that it was noisy or that  the machine has always worked just fine--and then a beat later, after I had already squealed a mental victory whoop, she would tell me that the mask leaked again. So I narrowed my question to the most vexing and recent of our problems with the CPAP: "Did your mask leak?" I asked. She told me it didn't. That she'd slept all night with the mask on without a leak. BUT she still had to get up and rub her sore foot, she said. And she still had to get up twice to pee. She didn't seem to be feeling the least bit celebratory. But, dear readers, if I'd had a bottle of champagne, I'd have downed a mimosa before yoga.

Books and Brie

Thanks to the presence  of daughter M, I went away for an overnight.

First there was this.

A reading at Flintridge Books by one of my favorite writing teachers.

This book includes snippets of writing by a few of Barbara's students. A half-dozen of us were there last night and we read, too.

Then I spent the night with the man who loves me at his place. 

Dinner was chips and cheese and crackers. After 270-some nights of cooking dinner for my mom with the only respite being three evenings of take-out pizza, and two previous nights away, last night's dinner felt like pure decadence. Cheese. Chips. I think we ate it off of plates, but I'm not sure because there was a lot of wine involved. Maybe we just shoved our heads into the bag and tore at the wedge of brie with our teeth.

I slept with both ears closed, dropping off to the distant yip-yip-yeeeee of coyotes. I sleep well-enough at home with my mom. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm the middle-weight sleeping champion of the world. But there's sleeping and then there's sleeping.

Refreshed, my mom and I tried the various CPAP masks again this afternoon, thinking that we might have better luck if we tried a daytime practice run. 

Nope.

Craptastic Pitifully Agonizing Pieceofshit and....What the Yoga Teacher Said

Also known as the CPAP. Honestly, if I were diagnosed with sleep apnea or some disorder that required me to sleep with one of these fucking asinine devices strapped to my face, I would smother myself with a pillow and be done with it.

Way back when--before my mom decided to have the smaller-than-a-pea non-metastasized tumor removed from her lung--the surgery which launched her onto the planet of the infirm, she was able to manage her CPAP. I have no fucking idea how since she lived on her own then.

After emails and telephone calls and internet inquiries spanning a couple of weeks, I was able to get a copy of the sleep study she had done a couple of years ago, a new doctor's prescription for CPAP accouterments, two home visits from the medical supply firm to acquaint her with the new masks that they thought would work for her. Neither mask has worked out--the first because it does not have an adjustable strap (fucking brilliant), and the strap that's on it is too big. The second mask, I'm pretty sure had its adjustable strap on backwards (do you suppose that guy who came to the house was really a respiratory therapist?) but after consulting the internet and putting the strap on the other way, mask number 2 still does not seem to seal properly to my mother's face. The medical supply place seems reluctant to provide her with the mask she had before. Why? I don't know, but if I had to make a really cynical guess, I would say that Medicare pays them more for the ones they've suggested.

So it's back to plain old oxygen tonight. I just heard the beep of the machine turning on, which means my mom is going to bed. For the next hour or two--or until I fall deeply into dreamland--she will yell obscenities, growl like a bear, and call out as if she's being chased by monsters. I was kinda hoping the CPAP would soothe this savagery--a nice plastic mask over her mouth would not only help her breathe properly, it would muffle the yells.

As for me, I'm going to do a little yoga before I try to sleep. "Find your personal boat," the yoga teacher said this morning.

What she meant, of course, was that we were to adapt the pose to our ability. But the phrase, "personal boat" has been bumping around in my head today. Things are rocky here in Margaritaville. And I  need a boat. Not necessarily to sail away in, but a boat that I can handle. A boat that's sleek and low, perhaps, or brightly colored. A boat that will hold this house and rock us all to sleep.

Report from Pillville: The CPAP, Blood Pressure Parties, and Oxygen

It's been a bit busier than usual here in Pillville. My mother's blood pressure was too high at her last cardiologist visit. Buy a blood pressure machine, the doctor advised, and check her a couple times a day. Then she pulled out her pen and wrote my mom a prescription for yet another medication. If she has to add anything else, the list may need a second page. I'm happy to report that the medication has had the desired effect, and I've been able to monitor my own slightly troublesome blood pressure as well--and it's been mostly fine, too. 

I'm skittish about hospitals and medical equipment. Where am I going to keep the blood pressure thing-y, I wondered. I didn't want to leave it out in the living room or kitchen, and my mom's room is just too full of stuff already. With the pots and pans? In the armoire in the dining room where I keep the device that checks her INR level? That thing only gets used once a week, but we need to check the blood pressure a couple times a day, so I  relented and keep it on the kitchen island next to the iPad. So, come over. Have a seat and read the newspaper on the iPad and see how your blood pressure is doing. We'll make it into a party. Maybe there could be alcohol involved, and I'll get a breathalyzer and we can test each other's blood alcohol levels, too.

And I'm thinking maybe we should have a Star Wars dress-up party now that my mom is going to start using her CPAP machine again. 

She looks like Darth Vader in that thing, but it's worth it if it helps her sleep without waking up shouting. Sleep apnea is a weird condition. If one is troubled with erratic breathing while trying to sleep, it's no wonder nightmares ensue. Who wouldn't wake up shouting? My mom never remembers any of it, however.

My mom also uses oxygen at night, and the CPAP will soon be hooked up to that machine. During the day, while she is unattached to any medical devices, we could have oxygen parties.

Let me know your favorite flavor so I can have it on hand. Do you suppose there's one that tastes like gin?