Near my dad's place in Tulare County, Ca. The beginnings of the wide strip of farmland that funds and separates the Californias (north and south).
So hey, turns out my tonsils are too big, my tongue too large for a small jaw (and oh shut up about that one, will you?), my uvula does strange things and my upper palate needs reshaping. More surgery, another overnight stay at Chez Hospital, all because I stop breathing when I sleep. For minutes at a time, there is no oxygen being delivered to my brain (or heart or lungs or anywhere else). The oxygenation of my blood should be around 98, 99 percent but during these apneic periods, it drops into the 70's for minutes at a time, until my brain finally sends out this !!!!YOUREGOINGTODIE!!!! signal that wakes me up, forcefully. I sit straight up in bed, gasping like I just came up too fast from several fathoms too deep, my body saturated with adrenaline and trying to combat the feeling I am in grave danger. I never know when I stop breathing, but I always know when I start again.
This happens five or six times, over an hour or so, until I give up and get out of bed. I rarely get more than an hour of sleep a night and I regularly go five days or more with none at all. My nights are spent watching the clock (to see if I slept and for how long) and reminding myself that, whatever my body may be insisting, I am not dying, everything is ok.
During the day, I fall into naps, alot. Short, useless naps that produce nothing more useful than another reminder that the old 'fight or flight' response is alive and doing well, thanks. I fall asleep when I am typing. You can see the evidence of my sleepiness when I write - letters or punctuation trail down the side of the page, the pen slipping as I fall into a nap, slipping and leaving a trail behind it that shows exactly when I started to nod. The course can be charted. I fall asleep when I am reading, or watching TV, or playing a video game or talking directly to you or driving down the street. I spend half my day nodding off and jerking myself back. My sister reminds me they use sleep deprivation as a torture technique. I can see why. All I want is to lay down - I remember only vaguely the feeling of falling into sleep.
I don't know yet if the oxygen deprivation has caused any long term brain damage (oh shut UP, will you??), but the doctors think there may be minor things with memory that may or may not resolve when I get some sleep (read: surgery). I know it has damaged my heart and lungs, which is why I'm taking on water like the Titanic, why I can't walk from one room to the next without having to stop to catch my breath, why I have angina. All of this may or may not resolve when I start to sleep, again. I'll either get better or I won't. I do know that between this and a couple of other, private things happening, if something doesn't change, I'll die. The doctor told me that last February - if something doesn't change, I'll be dead in a year.
I've always thought I would wake myself up when it happens, but it turns out that I might not one of these days. It can kill you - you can go to sleep, stop breathing, and simply just not start again.
I fell asleep writing this post.
