Weekly update
Aug. 4th, 2012 04:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
outsdrYawn.
So, Monday, I went to the next town over and stopped in the home-health-oxygen place to have my CPAP machine checked. They mentioned that the one I have will only do air delivery at a constant pressure; they wanted me to try using one that used pressure in response to how much air I apparently needed. Or something.
I told them about how I breathe through my mouth when I sleep, so they suggested I could try a full-face mask or a chin strap. After telling me that a full-face mask is "Only $250" they also talked about the CPAP machines cost; apparently, it's set up as a rental at $600 per month until insurance deductibles are met ($1,000, in my case) and then they bill it out as a purchase so it's covered by insurance. Or something.
Since they were offering me the test machine and a chin strap for free, I decided to go that route for now. They also reprogrammed a new smart card (the one in the old machine wasn't working, it seems) to keep track of how I used the machine during the week.
And ... christ, it's depressing. I was excited that first night, but the chin strap (a neoprene affair) must be too small- I had to stretch it so tightly to fit around my head that it hurt my face. And, once I had the mask in place, I simply was not getting enough air through my nose. I tried very hard, but after a few breathes through my nose, I was suffocating so badly that I forced my mouth open to breathe as deeply as possible for a while.
The chin strap lasted about 10-15 minutes. I left the mask on for the night, and it uses so much pressure at times that even when I tried to breathe through my mouth, I couldn't, because the back of my mouth was being forced closed. Or something. I dunno; I'm not in there.
I felt like crap when I got up in the morning; I was late for work and felt like crap all day. Tuesday night, same story. Wednesday, repeat of Tuesday.
Wednesday night, I actually stayed awake until 11 pm because I dreaded putting the damn machine on again. I didn't even attempt to use the chin strap. Oddly enough, I ended up sleeping with my mouth closed for the night, at least, it was closed whenever I woke up for whatever reason (rolling over, letting the cat in, going to the bathroom, letting the cat out, rolling over, moving me arm, whatever- I don't think I sleep very deeply. Ever.)
I woke up at 3:30 and lay awake until I got up at 6 a.m. So, Thursday sucked too.
When I was at the home-health-oxygen place Monday, the woman warned me to keep the machine lower than my head, which seemed odd to me. She explained it was in case the hose filled with water from the humidifier, keeping it lower than my head meant it wouldn't flow into my nose. Nice. But Wednesday night, one of the things that woke me was an odd popping sound. I eventually tracked it down to the CPAP hose- water had collected where it was hanging off the bed, enough that the hose was blocked, and as air was forced through, the water was making a popping sound. Lovely.
Thursday night, I started out with the mask on, tried sleeping again with my mouth closed, but couldn't do it this time. Woke up around midnight and ripped the mask off for some reason (I remember doing it, but not why.) Put it back on around 4 am. Felt like crap all day.
Thursday, one of the women from the home-health-oxygen place called to see how I was doing and left me a message to call her back; Friday, I did, and told her I felt worse than I had before. She asked if I wanted to try the full face mask; knowing that I'm going to have a home sleep study at some point, arranged by them (they're waiting on insurance approval) I told her I wanted to wait until the study was done and we had more information on what exactly we should be treating before we treated anything else. I've just finished paying off a lot of my old medical bills; I don't feel like making any new ones just yet.
I'm really discouraged. I'm tired of feeling like a zombie; tired of feeling like dead weight and not being able to think straight; tired of being nearly useless at work (someone is going to notice, eventually!) and just tired of being exhausted all the time.
I'm tired of a lot of things these days.
So what else is going on? I got all the corrections on Gilmore's book done and back to him. Still no idea when he'll have it finished- at this rate, maybe the end of the year. I don't know if he's even written all the chapters yet- I do know that I have a number of them that have not been assigned chapter numbers. And design changes are still being made, although thankfully not to the cover. The photo section that started as two parts, then went to one part, is now back to two parts. The photo captions that have been changed and changed and changed again from the font and style I picked at the beginning have now gone back to ... what I picked at the beginning. The one small solace is that Gilmore is as sick of this book as I am, it seems. Maybe more.
I've almost got the computer job finished for the furniture store. I'm hoping to make it in there today and finish up some things, and then it will be done. Should make about $1.5k off of this. Which will make a nice dent in my bills.
The next ASCAP payout is coming up this month. Maybe this will finally be the big one.
Now, to finish on an awesome note- the script I wrote (Waiting for the New Light) for the 72 Hour Script fest back in June has been selected as a semi-finalist! That is far further than I EVER expected to go. The 30 finalists will be announced next week; of those 30 there will be a winner and a runner-up, but honestly, I don't even care about that- I just really want to be a finalist because those are the scripts that will be used in the 72 Hour Film Fest. Seeing something I wrote being made into a movie would just be very, very cool. Fezzes and bowties cool.
So, Monday, I went to the next town over and stopped in the home-health-oxygen place to have my CPAP machine checked. They mentioned that the one I have will only do air delivery at a constant pressure; they wanted me to try using one that used pressure in response to how much air I apparently needed. Or something.
I told them about how I breathe through my mouth when I sleep, so they suggested I could try a full-face mask or a chin strap. After telling me that a full-face mask is "Only $250" they also talked about the CPAP machines cost; apparently, it's set up as a rental at $600 per month until insurance deductibles are met ($1,000, in my case) and then they bill it out as a purchase so it's covered by insurance. Or something.
Since they were offering me the test machine and a chin strap for free, I decided to go that route for now. They also reprogrammed a new smart card (the one in the old machine wasn't working, it seems) to keep track of how I used the machine during the week.
And ... christ, it's depressing. I was excited that first night, but the chin strap (a neoprene affair) must be too small- I had to stretch it so tightly to fit around my head that it hurt my face. And, once I had the mask in place, I simply was not getting enough air through my nose. I tried very hard, but after a few breathes through my nose, I was suffocating so badly that I forced my mouth open to breathe as deeply as possible for a while.
The chin strap lasted about 10-15 minutes. I left the mask on for the night, and it uses so much pressure at times that even when I tried to breathe through my mouth, I couldn't, because the back of my mouth was being forced closed. Or something. I dunno; I'm not in there.
I felt like crap when I got up in the morning; I was late for work and felt like crap all day. Tuesday night, same story. Wednesday, repeat of Tuesday.
Wednesday night, I actually stayed awake until 11 pm because I dreaded putting the damn machine on again. I didn't even attempt to use the chin strap. Oddly enough, I ended up sleeping with my mouth closed for the night, at least, it was closed whenever I woke up for whatever reason (rolling over, letting the cat in, going to the bathroom, letting the cat out, rolling over, moving me arm, whatever- I don't think I sleep very deeply. Ever.)
I woke up at 3:30 and lay awake until I got up at 6 a.m. So, Thursday sucked too.
When I was at the home-health-oxygen place Monday, the woman warned me to keep the machine lower than my head, which seemed odd to me. She explained it was in case the hose filled with water from the humidifier, keeping it lower than my head meant it wouldn't flow into my nose. Nice. But Wednesday night, one of the things that woke me was an odd popping sound. I eventually tracked it down to the CPAP hose- water had collected where it was hanging off the bed, enough that the hose was blocked, and as air was forced through, the water was making a popping sound. Lovely.
Thursday night, I started out with the mask on, tried sleeping again with my mouth closed, but couldn't do it this time. Woke up around midnight and ripped the mask off for some reason (I remember doing it, but not why.) Put it back on around 4 am. Felt like crap all day.
Thursday, one of the women from the home-health-oxygen place called to see how I was doing and left me a message to call her back; Friday, I did, and told her I felt worse than I had before. She asked if I wanted to try the full face mask; knowing that I'm going to have a home sleep study at some point, arranged by them (they're waiting on insurance approval) I told her I wanted to wait until the study was done and we had more information on what exactly we should be treating before we treated anything else. I've just finished paying off a lot of my old medical bills; I don't feel like making any new ones just yet.
I'm really discouraged. I'm tired of feeling like a zombie; tired of feeling like dead weight and not being able to think straight; tired of being nearly useless at work (someone is going to notice, eventually!) and just tired of being exhausted all the time.
I'm tired of a lot of things these days.
So what else is going on? I got all the corrections on Gilmore's book done and back to him. Still no idea when he'll have it finished- at this rate, maybe the end of the year. I don't know if he's even written all the chapters yet- I do know that I have a number of them that have not been assigned chapter numbers. And design changes are still being made, although thankfully not to the cover. The photo section that started as two parts, then went to one part, is now back to two parts. The photo captions that have been changed and changed and changed again from the font and style I picked at the beginning have now gone back to ... what I picked at the beginning. The one small solace is that Gilmore is as sick of this book as I am, it seems. Maybe more.
I've almost got the computer job finished for the furniture store. I'm hoping to make it in there today and finish up some things, and then it will be done. Should make about $1.5k off of this. Which will make a nice dent in my bills.
The next ASCAP payout is coming up this month. Maybe this will finally be the big one.
Now, to finish on an awesome note- the script I wrote (Waiting for the New Light) for the 72 Hour Script fest back in June has been selected as a semi-finalist! That is far further than I EVER expected to go. The 30 finalists will be announced next week; of those 30 there will be a winner and a runner-up, but honestly, I don't even care about that- I just really want to be a finalist because those are the scripts that will be used in the 72 Hour Film Fest. Seeing something I wrote being made into a movie would just be very, very cool. Fezzes and bowties cool.
