I Failed My
Test and Fell in Love, All in One Night
I am firmly in favor of denial. In
fact, I recommend everybody stay in denial as long as possible. Willful
ignorance is the land of bliss. But all good things must end. The end of my
denial I blame on my daughter. Here’s what happened. Her doctor ordered her to take
a sleep apnea test.
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Tell
me about it.” I should have kept my mouth shut.
Dee Dee described her symptoms: things like waking several
times a night, dreams of suffocation, waking up gasping for breath, breathing
hard, heart pounding, thinking one had a good night’s sleep yet being tired all
the next day, little things like that.
“Isn’t that normal? Doesn’t everybody have nights like that?
I have nights like that.”
“No, Mom, most people sleep at night. You’re like that every
night, like me. I’ve been after you for years to check your sleep.”
She told me about the new CPAP (continuous positive airway
pressure) mask she wears at night. It makes her look like Darth Vader. Very
sexy, she says. With the mask she sleeps all night long, does not get up even
once and she wakes rested. Now, she says, “I would never give up my mask. You
would have to pry it out of my cold dead fingers.”
It was the “sleep all night” part that blasted a crack in my
denial and made me scoot in to see Dr. Joe. He listened to me and while I was
talking, wrote out an order for me to have a sleep study test. So off I went to
spend the night in a cushy bed at Northern Montana Hospital.
Tony, the sleep technician, hooked me up to twenty-three
hundred sensors, each connected to a long wire hooked into some sort of
machine. The sensors were attached to my body by great green globs of sticky
stuff. Tony adjured me to tuck into bed, relax and go to sleep. “Oh, sleep on
your back. Nighty-night.”
I never sleep on my back. I sleep on my side and flip-flop
all night like a fish gasping on the shore. I lay awake in bed entertaining my
last vestige of denial, “I don’t have sleep apnea, no, not me.” Then I ran a
mental movie of Tony finding my body in the morning, strangled, wrapped in
sensor wires.
Sometime in the night, Tony entered my bedroom with a mask,
one with a long elephant-nose tube and lots of Velcro straps. As he fitted the
device onto my face, he crashed through my denial with, “You definitely have
apnea. Let’s try this mask. Now try to sleep. This time stay on your back.”
It was magical. I relaxed into the rhythm of the air flow.
Within minutes I felt the muscles in my face soften. I awaken every morning
with a tight jaw, often so tight it is painful. Goodness, I thought, my jaw
muscles must have been holding vigil, keeping me alive, so to speak. I could
feel every individual muscle in my body follow suit. Soon I was a relaxed blob
in the middle of the bed. I loved it. I felt exhilarated. But now my mind
kicked into high gear. This device could change my life. My head, which thinks
it can operate completely independent of my body, began reviewing ways my life
might be enhanced, physically, mentally and emotionally. We didn’t leave
anything out. Neither did we sleep. The excitement was too much.
I touched the mask over my face. I caressed its lines. I
lifted and shifted the coiled elephant-trunk tube. I asked the mask his name. “Alphonso,”
he replied. “Will you care for me and stay with me forever?” I asked. “Forever
and ever, I’ll watch over you,” Alphonso promised. I fell in love, head over
heels. “I’ll be with you through thick and thin, as long as the power doesn’t
go out,” he added.
Just as I began to shift into dreamland, Tony burst through
the door, removed my lover from my face, unhooked the sensors and told me it
was time to go take a shower. “Do you think you slept at all?” he asked. I
shrugged. “You’ll have to come back. I need to record real sleep time in order
to set the adjustments for your mask.”
I nearly cried. I wanted to take Alphonso home with me. Now I
have to wait an entire month to see him again. Next time, with Alphonso glommed
onto my face, I know I’ll sleep. Sigh.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
May 3, 2012
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