[Today’s run: mostly a walk 5.5 miles]
Well! after making those posts about needing to have an attitude that includes meekly following doctor’s orders (I think that was in there somewhere, by implication maybe), this week I got the results of the hokey home sleep study test I did. The lady says I had 600 snoring events, that my O2 was down in the low 80%, and various other things, and they want me to get a CPAP machine and learn to love it.
Of course the O2 sensor was slipping off my finger and the rest of the equipment for the test caused me to sleep worse than usual and in positions that maximize any apnea a person might have…. So I’m not enthusiastic about it. But it won’t kill me (I hope) and we will see if it actually helps.
But the one thing I think would help that I can do is lose weight. So food is not my friend. I hope I can keep that attitude. I really don’t want to do actual calorie counting, but I’m looking at the numbers on the packaging and I’m going back to cutting the sandwich in half and putting half in the refrigerator / take-home box.
That’s the other thing I’ve noticed about aging, it requires more discipline, not less.
Oh, the other thing that got me into this mood was that we watched the movie The Whale which is a pitiful story with lots of squalor and angst and family disfunction. The protagonist is amazingly obese and has been mismanaging his life for a long time, and at the end he possibly kills his daughter by dying and falling on her. It was sad in all sorts of ways. I think he got an Oscar for it. It’s brave, you know.
That’s about it. I’ll go get the infernal contraption next week.
3 replies on “Good timing!”
I think those machines have helped some people, but not sure they work for everyone’s sleep issues. Probably worth a try. If you haven’t tried the Breathe Right strips lately you may want to do that first. When I have a bad cold and there is zero air movement through my nostrils putting on one of those things clears an immediate path.
I went for a sleep analysis when my heart was acting up and had a similar experience to yours. When I woke I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. I don’t know how anyone can get a representative sleep session with all that stuff attached and constricting things. But avoiding the CPAP machine is a huge incentive to lose the weight.
In America, you really have to advocate for your health – do your research and fight for all you can get. Try everything aggressively until you find true solutions. (I know this because I live in an area chock full of old people who have stories.) Keep at it. One of my favorite SNL skits, FWIW. The Hippo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtJ70buqmHU