--continuing update after computer glitch. This was first posted in September
Logging onto the blog, I couldn't help noticing a big gap between Wrapping Up May and here it is September 5. What have I been doing that accounted for the gap?
Well, friends, I've been fighting for my life. Not against cancer or some infectious disease, but against chronic conditions that can do you in just as surely-as they already did with my younger brother Walt.
Since my last entry, leaving aside something I just posted on Niger and overpopulation and climate change, I've been occupied recovering from two total hip replacements, with a colonoscopy thrown in for good measure (during which everything looked about as good as it can where colonoscopies take place). But it wasn't as clear and simple as that. Before the first operation, I was diagnosed with a serious heart rate problem, atrial fibrillation; fortunately, the situation responded well to a newly approved drug. Getting to sleep was a problem because the left side hip replacement put a lot of stress on an injured left shoulder; fortunately, a steroid injection worked to resolve that one, at least for the time being. Then there was my old bedtime nemesis, foot pain, made worse by putting on about 15 pounds due to the forced inactivity of recovering from the two major surgeries,
But that wasn't the worst. Before the first hip operation, I had gone to a sleep lab run in Middlebury by Dr. Gorman, who had pioneered sleep treatment in the area by setting up a lab at the Rutland Regional Medical Center. I had gone there, partly to do a story, and found I had very, very serious sleep apnea problems. Basically, when you're awake you can keep your throat open by controlling muscles in your neck, but when you're asleep, those muscles relax and soft tissues block the airway. Either you force air through them (snoring) or you wake up gasping for breath. I'm told by my remaining brother that Walt didn't just snore at night, he cut down rainforests-information that suggests to me that one of the two great sleep apnea dangers (those being heart attack and stroke) felled him. My surgery team said I should do another sleep study to make sure I could handle anesthesia properly.
That I could do, and the two operations went well as operations. But when I did get in to discuss my sleep study results (you have wires attached all over your to monitor heart rate, breathing rate, muscular activity, oxygen, etc. etc.) I learned that the throat operation I'd had after the first sleep study hadn't solved the problem. My oxygen level was dropping into the 80 percent range of normal, due to dozens of breathing stoppages per hour.
By the time of that visit with Gorman, I had come to recognize the apnea episodes, and was waking up rather that continue to fight for breath-sometimes with horrible muscle cramping. At best, I would get three hours of sleep at a stretch, and more likely an hour and a half, after which I would stay awake doing office things until I started to fall asleep at the keyboard. A third reason sleep apnea can be fatal: losing control of a vehicle from falling asleep at the wheel. Do you know the statistics on how many people in this country are sleep-deprived? Be very, very scared of what might happen in the other lane, if not in your own car.
I have an appointment Sept. 14 to get fitted with a mechanical solution to sleep apnea: a mask connected with a device that continuously pumps in air, forcing the throat passages open. I tried one of these after the first sleep study and just couldn't tolerate it. Now, I'm told, the devices have been improved like just about everything else electronic, and the point of that night's work will be to get my CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine adjusted to my personal circumstances.
Assuming it works, Dr. Gorman said, getting enough sleep could help with all kinds of chronic conditions I'm now wrestling with. At the root of it all is having lost my pituitary gland to a tumor back in the 1980s, after which the replacement hormones didn't add up to a normal metabolism, and I put on a lot of weight, and am in the "metabolic syndrome" zone of diabetes 2, and have had neuropathic damage in one eye and probably in the feet. So the breathing mask could represent a big turnaround point.
Meanwhile, I want to thank the Rutland Herald for being very patient about hosting a blog titled "Out and About" by someone who was definitely nothing of the sort. Not even properly out, most of the time.
So for the next week I'll be up and down at odd hours, glad each time I wake up that I've done so. A race to the crossing with that big black train they sing about in gospel songs. I welcome anyone's hopes, wishes and prayers.
Comments