A Few Health Comments

A FEW HEALTH COMMENTS

A few minutes ago I searched this site for sleep apnea & cpap with few results; a couple of people complaining about having apnea, a technician explaining how sleep trials are done, a few people peddling whatever they can and are allowed. I am surprised by how few posts there are on this subject; I read this morning that 60% of diabetes sufferers probably have apnea as well; personal experience taught me that a good night’s sleep is essential in managing fibromyalgia; depression is influenced by fatigue from lack of sleep; most recently I found that heart failure, mine, probably is associated with apnea. Those are four big areas of health, I don’t know what these ailments cost but it has to be in the billions every year. There is the always present quality of life which cannot be measured so clearly.

This is what started me writing this post: I have had depression for the first sixty years of life; I had fibromyalgia for the last three decades; I am borderline diabetic; I was recently surprised by the onset of heart failure and a. fib.; recently came severe apnea.

My previous posts tell more than anyone would want to know about my depression and what I do to manage it. There are a few posts that describe how fibromyalgia is controlled with the help of the Chronic Pain Clinic at RIC; there are more posts on the heart business than can be of interest to anyone but myself; and now the apnea has been diagnosed and is being managed, 40 awakenings per hour are coming under control.

That all of these ailments and all of the managing methods are connected is obvious; that the sleep problems are common to all of them is known. In my happiness over the management of sleep problems I imagined that everyone in the world should be tested; a fantasy because not everyone wants to explore the ways that may make them feel better. It isn’t just men who avoid feeling right, there are a fair number of self-absorbed neurotic women who won’t search beyond their prejudices (herbals &c.).

I don’t expect anyone will change the way they handle their life because of my haranguing, and yet I do continue to nag every now and again. So many people might have better lives than they have if they had the courage to go at what is hurting them, spiritually, physically and psychologically.

I have known more than a few who have died through avoidance, died unnecessarily, and there will be so many more in the future. But damn it, I am not going to live a miserable life if I can help it.

A NEW ATTITUDE

A NEW ATTITUDE

I had thought for quite a while now that there is nothing new in the area of feelings and attitudes, now I am not so sure that what I knew to be true is so. Here is what has happened so far:

Until about two weeks ago it looked as if I could expect to live another three or four years; this is from the statistics for people who have what I have, and is a number not too far from the average expectancy for all men in this country. I am well aware that these statistics imply and I intend to do anything that I can to come out on the far side of that bell-curve; I also found the study that found people with heart failure often over estimate how long they have to go. I had asked a few medical people, found more than a few articles online that all said about the same thing. My chore had been to get my head around that notion, to accept what was and then to get on with my life.

As I wrote a week or so ago I had an appointment with someone who discovered that I have severe apnea, but that with treatment I can expect to add perhaps four years to this cruise that I am on. And one other thing, he now has probable cause for something that I had been told many times was idiopathic. Treatable and redeeming–quantity and quality.

In effect I have just have just been offered a doubling of my expectancy; this idea is taking a while to root in my cranium and germinate, but it will. There are events and situations all through life that cause feelings and attitudes; except that this business is different, what I am feeling and how I am seeing the world is not quite like any I have ever experienced. I am not ready to say that this is unique, it might just be a variation on one or more, I just can’t say yet.

Obviously I am happy with the news, I have long ago discarded any wish to be dead notions; have reached the conclusion that whatever pains and discomfort come along, no matter how intense, they cannot overwhelm that of being, of becoming. This new thing is a testimony to perseverance, to scratching at the tunnel face until the gold vein is completely discovered; and for that I am relieved, perhaps more than a bit smug. This that I have just received is a gift, more to God than from; but it is such an overwhelming gift that no words are appropriate. Perhaps it would be as if someone gave me a new car–then I see that it is a brand-new Rolls convertible; what the hell do you do with such a thing! A great problem to work at as I go on.

I may write more about this as I figure it out and believe it would be of interest to someone, anyone else. Let me add one more thing: To say that this is more a gift to God than from God is because I know that without man God is irrelevant; He is what we are about, that makes us what we are.

WHAT DO I LIKE TO DO?

WHAT I LIKE TO DO

There is a question that used to make me uncomfortable because my answer won’t be anywhere near to what the questioner expects:

“What is it that you like to do for fun?”

It could be one of the top ten questions in the world, if anyone cared enough to count and compare. It may be thought of as one those necessary boxes that have to be filled in before proceeding to the next page. And why the hell was I uncomfortable about my answer.

The response is that I like what I am doing right then, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it: Drinking coffee with a friend, discussing a book with another, arguing politics with the guys at work, looking out the window at the progress spring is making in the back garden, figuring out what I’d like to make for dinner, and of course there is doing just this putting down of words and thoughts.

After I give the short answer there comes a pause as the listener tries to fit it into one of the fun & enjoyment categories. Failing this there now appears a slightly puzzled look, as if I posed a riddle without adding a clue.

When this happened the other day I added; “I wouldn’t be having a better time if we were eating hot dogs at top of the Eiffel Tower (which used to have the most powerful mustard in those little pots); wouldn’t be feeling any better if were about to visit the coliseum in Rome”; I think that I added a couple of other obvious situations, but you get the idea by now. Doing and being active don’t make me any happier nor less; it isn’t that I don’t do the usual things, it is just that feeling good is independent from doing.

From the discomfort I was feeling when this question was asked I began enjoying it as I practiced my response, getting the words and inflections just right; I enjoy it because it is true; fun in and of itself, otherwise I’d ignore the question and move on.

This isn’t a big idea, but it is a crucial one; those who go from here to there and check off all the points of interest along the way don’t come back in any better shape than when they left, if I need something in my life going to Niagara Falls won’t supply it; I was born and raised in Niagara, so I can tell you it ain’t got anything you can’t find anywhere else. Beautiful, awesome at first, unique—but not a real meal.

I thought that I’d pass this along with the hope that it will resonate with perhaps one or two people, puzzle a few more.

UNCERTAINTY

There are times that bring on feelings of uncertainty or helplessness, they may arrive at four in the morning or as I walk down Michigan Avenue on a beautiful spring day. There are times when I look to what I have depended on and trusted, only to find that they are not enough or have disappeared. These are the times when I am sure there are no alternatives left in my cupboard.

When this happens I have found out that there is a reason:That somehow or other I have put myself in the center of my universe, this weak bearing. If I then imagine that I am not the center, and even though I can’t put into words or images what is I do know, I am certain of its Presence and know instinctively that it doesn’t disappear or disappoint. And when I do manage to get my head around that idea I find that I am in a better place, a place where I ought to be.

This is not a piece of any religion or cult, just something I discovered that fits right, and so I thought I’d pass it along.

Persistence pays

It is right to say something as I accept that I have added years to my life expectancy by following a string as far as it goes; and I admit that that is what I have realized this week.

I have been told perhaps a dozen times that my heart condition was idiopathic (the word idiot always came to mind), that I should live carefully and not worry about the cause, just the relief that all these medicines provide. Being a good patient that is just what I have been doing, as I was wrapping my mind around living in this new and limited body I kept asking unresolved questions about fatigue and all that it was doing to me and my life.

The pulmonary doctor finally said that all of my lung conditions had disappeared and that there was no need to return; I pushed the fatigue question yet again and so she ordered a sleep study which showed minor apnea that she wanted reviewed by a sleep specialist anyway. Reluctantly I made the appointment with just the thoughts of pacemaker and transplant as all the arrows left in my quiver–neither of which I was anxious to launch from my bow.

The sleep doctor pointed out that I have severe apnea, that waking those hundreds of times a night each sending a jolt to the heart telling it to wake up and to increase pressure; and that this constant bombardment by a hormone leads to the heart breaking down. That’s the short answer of the little I remember: except that here was cause for which there is a cure; a CPAP machine will control the apnea, allow the heart to get a night’s rest, help control my weight and mood. Pretty much everything except squeeze oranges for juice in the morning. Oh yes—looking at some of the online studies it looks as if I may have increased my life by a number of years—No Shit!

I didn’t put the meager medical details down as guide for others because I don’t know anything at all about medicine; but I do know that if I had not kept asking the question until I found someone who had an answer that made sense I would continue declining with the shorter life expectancy. There ain’t no guarantees that continued searching will bring resolution to all problems, no guarantee at all, and in that case acceptance is the right road to follow. But I know that not looking around for answers means that none will ever be found.

I could express this in a few other ways, with more precision and wisdom but this is just some information from a guy who had something going and pursued the string to the end.

A Refurbished Part for the Engine

I have never had the imaginative cues that would have me starting a book nevertheless a saga, I have never done much writing at all other than journals and these few unscripted scribbles, so I don’t know the rules or guides for starting a new chapter, finishing another. About all that I know is intuitive aided by the thoughts of just a few authors and a friend or two.

I know intuitively that I have just completed a chapter of what voyage.

Without resorting to those rules and guides for either novels or non-fiction writing I figure that a chapter has characters whose role grew, diminished or evaporated through the circumstances that the protagonist experiences and how the characters may fit and be important, appropriate or irrelevant. Out of the weather of events and fates the main character emerges into the next chapter a different person, one who is more fitting to his fate. Routes and passageways have been explored carefully so as not to damage the keel although the loss of a little hull paint is no great price as it will be replaced at the next haul-out.

It is not that there are or ever will be winners and losers, instead there is a crew who may or not be aboard for the whole voyage. One plans then begins a cruise with the idea that the plank owners, the original volunteers and the paid crew will be there at the final port; there is no reason at all to believe this, it is a wish coming from inexperience and love. At each port along the way there is the opportunity for some to leave and some to sign on; there is languishing on docks ahead a few whom I have no reason to choose or be chosen because they are as yet unmet. There may or may not be berths open at that time, and once leaving port it is rare to return to sign on someone who had been left on land.

Yesterday I was informed that the engine needed a new auxiliary part and that it would lengthen the time I can be at sea and maneuver me more easily through squalls; this addition came as a complete surprise to the engineers but it will be installed shortly.

Right now the pilot is obtaining charts of what opportunities have just been offered by the current repair, the charts he thinks he needs are now being drawn as the previous are now out of date and will be stored away in the map drawer. Like all charts they provide information, but no chart, no meteorologist, no pilot knows all that lays just beyond the horizon—and that uncertainty is what makes everyone anticipate the long cruise. The pilot has a few more lines from squinting in bright sun , he is not as quick to bend or haul a line as he had been, but this is of little concern because the tackle we carry has been proven and maneuvers well practiced.

The boat will make a test run of but a few days to check out the maintenance and fitting of the rig while thinking again on those new charts that are arriving piecemeal from the cartographer. The anticipation, that anticipation, tomorrow’s anticipation sparks the crew-ready to embark and hoist sails.

POSSIBILITIES

POSSIBILITIES

It is possible to cherish something so much that I destroy it.

It is possible to desire someone so much that I frighten.

It is possible to proclaim so loudly that they cover their ears.

It is possible to do and be all of those efforts; but it is necessary that I try again today and then tomorrow.

The possibility is the prize.

The One True Way

Last night I was discussing with a friend the nature of the religious experience (perhaps this explains why I spend so much time alone); and the only way to maintain or repeat the experience. It will be no surprise that mine is the only right way to do this is by going the route that I do, that every other direction is misguided and leads to dead ends.

That someone else would have the temerity to claim that connecting with others, to do something in concert was a road to enlightenment or even epiphany seems so contrary. My ascetic struggles obviously are what has brought me to this stage of development. The argument was going absolutely nowhere nor could it; if each of us finds ourself in a new place, with new perspective that is so life changing and defining it seems impossible that someone else could have done this differently.

I now have first hand knowledge of why there are religious differences; that there will always be differences; why they are so violent in defending the true way.

Navigation instructions

Looking over the rows and rows of newspaper headlines that are available on-line every morning I listen to what the voice inside of me is whispering because it sees faster, analyzes quicker, connects what is going on with the appropriate emotional hues; all combine as my attitude of reality.

This morning I pick the glimmers that rise above dark and deep seas, I search the thousand shades of darkest grays to spot the hint of light coming through the clouds. Carefully watching the surface to see the cat’s paws generated by slight indications of welcome wind that will drive me forward.

It is not that I ignore the dark, deny the doldrums, and overlook the shoals that run under my keel; it is important to note each and every danger, but I choose the positive signs because they give me measure of my way forward. We can only sail on the sea that surrounds and supports us, we can only sit still or move forward; there is no way that going backward over a route already finished will happen–no way.

So as the lookout reports a possible deepening channel ahead, a fresh puff of air, and sighting a guide star I can plan the day’s course and predict the length of this run.

That Abject Feeling

There are times in everyone’s life when the terror of aloneness approaches the limits of what can be handled, if the loneliness was any more painful it would push me over the edge. When I see that boundary coming at me I automatically look for diversions, we look for diversions because allowing or welcoming pain is weird or pathological. They might be: work, booze, drugs, orgasms, casual friends, games and entertainment, there is Twitter and Facebook; all these and more allow me to shy from this abject feeling, this most horrible of feelings.

There are times in everyone’s life when the bliss of solitude is the greatest pleasure imaginable; I then travel with the knowledge that I am where I ought to be and who I ought to be. I need nothing; I will have activities but they are no longer necessities. When I have let myself drift from being the center of my universe and that necessity to control I get to enjoy this rightness.

To find the latter I have to allow abject loneliness its time on stage, letting it cavort and destroy the sets, frightening us actors. It is when I stay for that complete show, all three acts, watch the curtain descend that I can allow myself to be–to leave the theatre in peace.

Forcing myself to feel the pain of loneliness and emptiness is not masochism because there is no pleasure in it; but from the depths of that terror arise bliss, joy, rightness and a knowledge of that that allows all this to be.