Here we go again

I had another disastrous night with that danged CPAP machine last night.

Rep guy had called me yesterday and put my mind at ease about the broken unit; no problem, he would replace it if I wanted to drop in whenever it was convenient.  In the meantime, I could just use the elastic band to hold it in place, and he recommended changes to the humidity setting that he thought might help me.

After putting in a day on only about four hours sleep, I was fairly well done for by about 7:30pm (fell asleep and didn't even see first pitch!).  So I hobbled off to bed around 8:15pm.

Got myself all prepped and hooked up and hunkered down to go to sleep.

And every time I exhaled, the machine gave out a low whistle.  Turns out my elastic band wasn't holding the cover quite tight enough.  So I dug out some masking tape and jerry-rigged a temporary fix.

It kind of worked.

Sort of.

At least I went to sleep.

Only to wake at 11:30pm, desperate for moisture, coughing (or trying to cough), and aware that a headache was setting in.

Off came the mask.

For the night.

I wasn't going to take any chances of having a repeat of my first night with the machine.

Woke again at 2:00am and John asked me why I didn't have the danged thing on.

"Dry mouth," I replied, "and it gave me a headache again.  End of experiment."

When I woke for the day at 5:00am, I still had the headache (and wasn't yet fully recovered from the dry mouth).

I took two rapid release extra-strenghth Tylenol and hoped that would take care of the headache.

It didn't.

When John got up, I asked him if he'd take me to the rep guy right after breakfast so he could replace the faulty humidity chamber unit.

Before we headed out, I took a Maxalt to rid myself of the obvious migraine that had developed.  By the time we were on our way, I was starting to feel much better (wiped out, but better).

We arrived at rep guy's office just after 9:00am this morning and he had already started his session with his first appointment, so we had to wait until that was over.  But he saw me immediately he was finished, and it didn't take him long to exchange the units.  He took the time to look at the results from last night which confirmed that there had been a steady leak -- obviously from the chamber cover not being closed properly.  He wished me luck with the new unit.

I see him again on Tuesday next week, for our regularly scheduled appointment.

God, I hope I'm functional by then!