Wake You Right Up

Yesterday I returned from class in a rush to pee, only to discover workmen in my bathroom. (Shortages of bathroom opportunities seem to be a theme of this trip; I've tried to use them as reminders that much of the world can't count on anything approaching convenient indoor plumbing, but sometimes my patience frays.) Evidently whoever stayed here last week had complained about a leaking shower stall. Anyway, yesterday the workman apologized, and left fairly quickly.

This morning I slept really late. Partly this is because, sans CPAP, my sleep was of poorer quality than usual and I needed more of it; partly it was because I pigged out on chocolate last night. Bad Susan! Anyway, when I finally woke up I heard voices in conversation, thought they were from the hallway outside -- even as I wondered groggily why they were so loud and clear -- and, again at the urging of my bladder, wandered yawning, blinking and in the buff out to my bathroom, only to encounter yesterday's workman with a bucket.

We both yelped and performed evasive maneuvers. I can only assume that he'd knocked on the door of the suite and that I, asleep, hadn't heard him, which he'd taken as a sign that I wasn't there. In any case, I suspect he was more embarassed than I was. I retreated to my bedroom, threw on sweats and a t-shirt, and went back out to talk to him and his partner, who'd been in the shower stall when I emerged from my room and had missed the whole encounter. This gentleman explained that the shower was really fine, but asked me to put a towel in front of it when I bathed. After the two of them left, I discovered my bathmat, sopping wet, balled up inside the shower, and I admit that annoyed me a little.

It was certainly a memorable way to wake up.

I barely had time for my in-room breakfast before I had to go to class. I've been feeling very numb in class, which is ironic because we've been discussing American empire systems and how they foster addictions and numbness. To answer Jean's question, the title of the class is "Dissident Discipleship within the American Empire: Cultivating and Modeling Truly Alternative Ways of Being." I took this course because I wanted some concrete, practical suggestions for how to live against the grain of dominant/oppressive culture (aside from breaking my own addictions to shopping and chocolate, projects which are going very slowly, to the detriment of my bank balance and my waistline). I found yesterday's discussion annoyingly intellectual and also us-versus-them-y, a trait that tends to put my b.s. detector on Red Alert. Today was better, because we talked much more deeply about personal experience, instead of bashing mythical Thems. (We have met the Them, and They are Us.)

So far I'm most moved by, and interested in, the concept of "buried narratives," the untold histories resulting in behaviors that look personal but really have deeper cultural and historical roots. In other words, the personal is political: family addiction and abuse, for instance, are often byproducts of social oppression and trauma. The instructor's given us a handout inviting us to explore how our apparently personal suffering connects us to history and thereby to the suffering of others. "For example, if you were abused by someone who fought in a war, then you are now connected to the children of veterans returning from Irag, to children of military men and women all over the world, and to children of guerrila warriors and freedom fighters as well." (Here's the entire Deprivatizing Suffering exercise, for snyone who's interested.)

I've gotten so used to the rhetoric of suffering as special-making -- "I'm more oppressed than you are, so you'll never understand me" -- that the notion of transforming suffering into connection is very refreshing. I also like the course's reminder that oppression hurts oppressors too, by costing them their humanity. Nobody wins.

The instructor, Nichola Torbett, founded Seminary of the Street, and is starting a 12-Step Group for people trying to recover from the dominant culture. I love this idea, and if I lived in the Bay Area, I'd go to those meetings in a heartbeat. But I don't live in the Bay Area; I live in Reno.

There are huge ironies here, or maybe not. The East Bay seems so distant from what I think of as dominant culture that the idea of meetings here to recover from dominant culture is . . . well, I don't know, something like Buddhist monks having meetings to recover from materialism. (East Bay residents do have a sense of humor about their own politics; the co-instructor of the course, an African-American lesbian Christian pastor, had us convulsed today as she described the gyrations local seminary students go through trying to make sure that any religious service welcomes anyone of any possible background or tradition. "And you'd better smudge some sage in case anybody's Native American! And include origami cranes in the liturgy for the Asians in the building! And there might be somebody who thinks God is a muffin, so we'd better have a few committee meetings about how to revise our liturgy to honor the muffin god!") On the other hand, maybe you can only realize you even need recovery from the dominant culture when you've gotten that much distance from it. In any case, Reno seems infinitely more afflicted by the dominant culture than the East Bay does, and is there any chance of getting such a program started in Reno? Should I try? Can I try, if I'm not yet in recovery from the dominant culture myself?

Is any of this even making sense?

When I signed up for the class, I didn't know yet that my parish would be closing. Now that it is, I'm trying to discern what the class is suggesting about how to proceed from here. I've long had a sense that for many Christians, church buildings and administration become idols, getting in the way of doing God's work in the world, and the class has deepened that conviction. I may try to get some folks together to do house church back home, since I already have some friends in the parish who are open to this (and so's my bishop, although I'm not sure what we'd do about clergy).

Sigh. If anybody reading this in Reno would be interested in a 12-Step Group to recover from the dominant culture, let me know, okay?

Westward Ho

It usually takes me three and a half hours to get from Reno to Berkeley. Yesterday it took six and a half. Granted, that included two sorely needed breaks to stretch, refuel and recycle liquids, but still.

Over the mountains, there was roadwork. Everywhere, there was incredible traffic, as everyone who'd been in Reno for Hot August Nights headed west again. Traffic crawled, rarely getting up to thirty miles an hour. The one time the road cleared enough for all of us to get up to actual highway speed, I got pulled over by the CHP and given a speeding ticket.

Sigh.

Granted, I was speeding. So was everyone else on the road. I wasn't going any faster than anyone else; I just got unlucky and lost the CHP lottery. They've cut me breaks at least twice before, though, so my number was up this time (and I saw a lot of other people pulled over).

Anyway, it was a thoroughly miserable trip, especially when I stopped for gas about sixty miles out of SF. I needed to use the bathroom, but it was out of order. I drove to the gas station across the street to use their bathroom, which had a line of at least fifteen people, no lie. Even worse, the people emerging from the bathroom looked really unhappy. I wound up driving west an exit or two, where I finally found clean, functional facilities in a fast-food place.

I guess the trip could have been worse. Eastbound traffic in the mountains, already down to one lane because of construction, was stopped dead: people had gotten out of their cars and were wandering along the side of the road. The CHP officer told me there'd been two accidents, including a big rig that had gone off the road, and no one knew how long it would take to get things moving again.

By the time I got to Berkeley around 6:30, I was thoroughly frazzled. Luckily, my suite's lovely: I have a living room, bathroom and bedroom to myself -- and the bedroom has a view of the Bay Bridge and SF skyline -- although when I unpacked, I discovered that I'd fogottten both a crucial piece of my CPAP and crucial items of clothing. Gary's FedExing all that stuff to me; it will get here tomorrow. Between FedEx charges and the speeding ticket, this has become a very expensive trip!

My course is interesting, if not entirely what I expected: more academic than practical so far, although I suspect that will change.

Felicity Fiddle, swaddled in blankets for insulation in the backseat, was nicely in tune last night and seemed to have weathered the trip fine. Tonight, everything had gone haywire, and it took me a good forty minutes to get her even remotely in tune again. I couldn't get the fracking pegs to stay put: I'd tighten a string and get it in tune and then, sproing, the peg would loosen again. Drove me nuts. I finally got everything adjusted and relatively stable, but I hope this doesn't happen again tomorrow! I'm using my practice mute so I don't bother anyone else in the dorm, and I'm having fun playing, but man, the tuning challenge was almost as frustrating as yesterday's drive (if not as expensive!).

The weather's cool and cloudy here. I usually appreciate that during the summer, but this week, I miss Reno's sun. Also Gary. Also the cats.

I'll feel much better when I get my CPAP and can get a good night's sleep!

Progress and Decline

At this week's fiddle lesson I started learning Oh Those Britches Full of Stitches, here played much more ably by someone who's only had three lessons than I can play it yet. Oh well! This marks my first official foray onto the D string, although I've been playing it in secret almost since the beginning.

Charlene is also trying to teach me the correct bowing technique for "Egan's Polka," which right now is very difficult. I'm used to one bowstroke per note, so playing several notes on one stroke is new and confusing. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it after a few more days of practice, though.

In today's medical news, I went to see my pulmonologist for the sleep-study results from a few weeks ago. Gary and I had talked last night about how, although my mood's fine, I've been really tired lately and have been sleeping a ridiculously long time (like, ten or twelve hours) each night. Exercise makes me sleep more right now, whereas it usually helps me wake up earlier. The last time that happened was before I was diagnosed with my sleep disorder. Six years ago, they called it UARS -- Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome -- which meant that my blood oxygen levels weren't going down, as in true apnea, but that my airway was narrowing enough to tell my brain to wake up.

I only had the second sleep test because my insurance company required it, but after last night's conversation, I wondered if maybe my sleep disorder had gotten worse. And, lo and behold, indeed it has: I now have full-blown -- although mild -- apnea. Off the CPAP, my blood oxygen dipped to 79 percent and my sleep was very disturbed (I didn't actually stop breathing, but my breathing was very shallow). The second they put me on the CPAP, I plunged into REM sleep, which I hadn't reached until then. "You like CPAP," the pulmonologist told me.

Indeed I do. I asked him what would make a sleep disorder get worse, and he pointed out gently that I've gained twenty pounds in those six years. Some of this is due to menopausal metabolism changes and some of it's probably due to my meds (I lost twenty pounds after going off my first round of meds about ten years ago). I'm not technically overweight, but I'm at the border.

Gahhhhh. I'd love to get off the meds, but my shrink thinks that's a really, really bad idea. She thinks I have to be on something the rest of my life. Pfui!

In the meantime, they'll be dialing my CPAP up a notch, from 6 to 7. I'll be curious to see if that makes a difference.

The good news here is that insurance will definitely pay for the sleep study and the CPAP. The bad news is that I have to keep hauling the CPAP around when I travel. I wish they could make one the size of an iPod, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Matters Medical and Musical

I had my sleep test last night; two hours in, the tech woke me up so he could put a CPAP on me, which means I need the CPAP, which means -- we hope -- that insurance will pay for it. The Ambien didn't knock me out as much as I expected, although it was a very small dose; it probably had some effect, though, because I certainly slept much more deeply than I did during my first sleep test six years ago.

I still haven't figured out what to do about Harley. He's the big fluffy black-and-white cat, for those of you who were wondering. Claire commented that she elected not to have an expensive biopsy on a cat because the vet couldn't describe any treatment options that would result from it. We once made the same decision, for another cat, for the same reason. But this vet seemed to be saying that there may be things we can do to prolong Harley's life and comfort, and that the test will tell us a) if that's true and b) what the correct treatment would be if it is, since the correct treatment for one of the possible conditions would quickly kill him if it were another of the possible conditions.

We won't be opting for kidney transplant or dialysis, both of which are now available for cats. That's entirely too much suffering and expense for everyone involved. But if a course of steroids or antibiotics would help him, I'll happily go there. And while I might not put a much older cat through a biopsy, Harley's still fairly young, and I'd like to keep him around as long as possible. I love all our cats, but Harley's special.

Anyway, I've asked to meet with our regular vet (she's at the same hospital but wasn't there the day Harley had his dental and bloodwork) for a second opinion. For one thing, I want to talk to somebody who values cats more than curtains, or at least understands that we do. I'm sure the vet we talked to the other day didn't mean that the way it came out, but the comment bothered me. And since Gary and I came away with very different impressions of what she told us, I hope he'll come to this meeting too, so we'll at least be working with the same basic understanding of the situation.

In much happier news, my fiddle tone's getting better. I thought it was, but then Gary said it was, which made me really happy. I'm diligently practicing Egan's Polka and Angeline the Baker, although my versions are simpler and much, much slower than these YouTube examples. Charlene has me practicing a technique called "polka bowing;" she was impressed at how quickly I picked it up during this week's lesson, but I can't seem to do what she wants me to do with it at home. Gahhhh! She says that next week, I'll receive official permission to use the D string, but I suspect that depends on how well I do with the other stuff.

Anyway, fiddling makes me happy. Happy is good.

Oh: and tomorrow, I'm back to volunteering at the hospital. Yay!

Up in Tahoe

So today, after a very late start (partly because of the book offer), I drove up to South Lake Tahoe for our diocesan convention. The convention really starts tomorrow morning, but I wanted to get here tonight, since I'm not a morning person and business begins at 9 a.m.

The hotel offers "mountainview" rooms or "lakeview" rooms; the second are more expensive. So I booked the first, but was delighted to find that I can see a sliver of the lake anyway.

In other respects, though, the room's bizarre. I'm used to accomodations for business travelers, which this clearly isn't. Not only isn't there a coffee maker in the room -- a startling depature from the norm, although room coffee is always too weak for me anyway -- but there are only two outlets in the main room. They're across the room from the bed and almost the entire length of the room from a very small table, too heavy to move, which offers the only working surface.

The most immediate problem this poses is how to plug in the CPAP. I called housekeeping and they brought me an extension cord, which will work. I'd hoped they'd point out outlets I'd missed, but no such luck. So at night I'll recharge my computer from a bathroom outlet and use the two outlets in the room to run the CPAP and recharge my BlackBerry. Oy!

Also, the lighting's pretty lousy, and the chairs are uncomfortable. Yeah, I know. Hotel management doesn't want me in my room. They want me downstairs, giving all my money to the casino. Sorry, guys. I'm already shelling out enough of my money for internet access, at an exorbitant $12/day. For the sake of efficiency -- since I have stacks of grading to do when I'm not at the convention -- I decided to have a continental breakfast delivered to my room each morning, so I can have my coffee in the room while getting work done and won't have to shower and dress to run downstairs for java. That's $11/day, too, although the good news is that there's a Starbucks on-premises and room service will deliver from there, so I'll get real coffee, stuff strong enough to deserve the name.

This is all terribly decadent, but I have to have internet to keep on top of applications for the search committee I'm on, and I have to have coffee to feel like a human being, and it's nice to feel like a human being without having to leave the room. And hey, we may still have some zombiebucks available, plus I just sold a novel, although I won't see any of that advance for quite a while (payment used to be half on signing and half on delivery, but now it's half on delivery and half on publication).

The good news is that, since casinos never want you to leave their walls, there are always lots of places to eat, ranging from the expensive to the reasonably reasonable. I had dinner -- a tasty sandwich and fresh salad -- at the Hard Rock Cafe downstairs. Hotel restaurants usually take forever, but the service was very speedy, and my waitress was great. She seemed genuinely touched when I told her I'd tip in cash instead of on my credit card, so she wouldn't be taxed on the tip. "That's above and beyond the call of duty," she told me. But being a casino waitress has to one of the tougher jobs around, and I never understand how service workers in Tahoe can afford the rents, so if I can save her a buck or two in taxes, great.

And so to bed. I hope that Starbucks comes on time!

Playing Catch-Up

Yeah, I know. I'm really behind.

Wednesday was a gala day. I learned that I'll be getting a big fat royalty check from my story in The Living Dead, an anthology of tales about zombies. The book reprints my story "Beautiful Stuff," which you can also find in my collection The Fate of Mice. (Read my zombie story, along with ten other great stories that have nothing to do with zombies! Makes a great gift idea! Christmas is coming!)

To tell you the truth, I don't get the current zombie craze. As I've remarked to my fiction workshop, they're pretty boring monsters. But TLD has been selling like hotcakes, and as a result, my share of the royalties is not only more than I've made in royalties on my last three books -- not difficult, since they haven't earned royalties -- but is in fact more than my advance for The Fate of Mice. Oh, man. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be in a book with Clive Barker and Stephen King. But still.

So, yeah, we'll be getting a nice bunch o' zombie bucks. Also, Wednesday I learned that I'll be teaching my Tolkien course again in Spring 2011, this time as a semi-lecture course with a cap of fifty students (rather than the usual thirty-three), because the department's desperate to increase enrollments. Hey, just doing my bit to get us through the budget crisis . . . we'll see if this works, but whatever happens, I'll enjoy teaching Tolkien.

Yesterday I received my box o' sock-knitting goodies from Inez, who sent me a bunch of lovely KnitPicks DPNs, some nifty cardboard tubes for holding DPNs and the projects attached to them, four skeins of colorful sock yarn, and a handy little canvas project bag which you can hang from your wrist or from the arm of a chair. This is an extremely useful accessory in places like airplanes, where you want to make sure that your yarn doesn't fall onto the floor and unroll down the aisle, tripping flight attendants and wreaking havoc.

Yesterday I went to see my psychiatrist, who giggled a lot when I told her about fiddle lessons, but thinks they're probably good for me. Then I zipped over to Franklin's Crafts and spent some zombie bucks on fun boucle yarn to make Christmas stockings for three kids, all children of friends. Then I went to another doctor's appointment, this time at the sleep center, since my insurance company is saying they'll no longer pay for my CPAP if I don't have a repeat sleep test (I haven't had one since the first one six years ago). After asking me if I wouldn't like some surgery to remove excess tissue in my throat -- said surgery would leave me with a sore throat and difficulty swallowing for three weeks, and wouldn't even necessarily work, so I declined -- the good doc scheduled me for a sleep test in a few weeks. He also gave me a script for three Ambien so I'll be able to sleep that night, since last time that was a problem. (Hey, you try sleeping in a strange bed while you're wired with more gadgets than the space shuttle, especially when the other people in the sleep lab are snoring like chainsaws, since that's what gets folks into these places. Sleep labs need much better soundproofing than this one has.)

I said, "Ambien? Isn't that the stuff where you get up in your sleep, drive across the country, and eat a supermarket?"

"There can be some retrograde amnesia," the doctor said brightly, "but you won't do anything you wouldn't do ordinarily."

"Oh. Okay. You'd better hide the chocolate, then."

He laughed. "We will. We'll hide the chocolate."

Last night I went to Katharine's to knit and fiddle around with the fiddle. Katharine and Pamela were properly complimentary about my version of "Mary Had A Little Lamb," and even started teaching me "Simple Gifts," but Katharine's attempt to get me to play rhythm flopped. I got completely lost in all the competing notes. Hey, gimme a break: I've only been taking lessons for three weeks! So we knit and ate cookies instead.

Today, Gary and I headed up to scenic Truckee, California for lunch and shopping. He got some odds and ends at their kitchen store. I spent some more zombie bucks on a new skirt and pair of slacks -- both on significant sale -- and then we went to a new (to me) yarn store up there. I liked it a lot, and spent even more zombie bucks on yet another pair of DPNs (ebony, this time, and 7" long rather than the 6" ones from Inez) and yet more sock yarn for Gary. One of these days I'll knit a pair of socks that doesn't slide down around his ankles. I will! I will! I swear it! If it's the last thing I do, I'll never be hungry again!

Oh, wait. Wrong story.

I had a lot of fun practicing the fiddle this evening, largely because I decided not to use the practice mute. After warming up with TTLS and FJ (Frere Jacques), I launched into many successive versions of MHaLL, starting at 70 bpm and working up to, I think, 90. Charlene wants me to get to 100 with good tone. That probably won't happen this week, but I'm heading in the right direction. When I got too bored with Mary and her little lamb, I practiced "Simple Gifts" and "A Mighty Fortress is our God." They're much rougher than Mary or Jacques, let alone the dreaded TTLS, but Gary recognized "Simple Gifts," so I must be doing something right.

I'm going to try to learn some Christmas carols so I can play them for the Philly family when I'm there. I talked to my mother today and asked her if she had any requests. She said, "Not that I can think of, but maybe I will when you're here."

"When I'm there," I said, "your request will probably be for me to stop playing."

Next weekend is the one-year anniversary of Dad's arrival in Reno. Last night I cried some at Katharine's house. Today I got a little sad when Gary and I ate lunch in Truckee, because the restaurant we always to go there was one of Dad's favorites from previous visits, and he never got there after he moved to Reno.

Ah, well. I swam for fifty minutes before dinner. That should help my mood.

Belated Links

The Sacramento reading was great fun, although the photo makes me look like a rabid, snarling animal. That's not the photographer's fault, though. I very rarely photograph well.

Said photographer is Tim Kahl, who invited me and Ellen and wrote me a long, thoughtful e-mail afterwards. Thanks, Tim!

Also, here's this week's Grand Rounds, which has a great theme and in which I'm delighted to be included. Thanks, Edwin!

I came back from Sac with a really nasty cold, which is why I've been behind on blogging and many other things. I wasn't feeling well enough to go to the hospital today, which really disappointed me because I was looking forward to seeing our newly refurbished ER. But I didn't want to give anyone my germs, or get anyone else's, and I didn't think anyone would appreciate my coughing and sneezing all over them.

I have my new CPAP now. It's not, alas, smaller than the old one, at least not once the humidifier's added on. But it's very quiet, and I like it.

Wonders of Technology

Today I saw my new pulmonologist, who gave me a prescription without another sleep test (yay!), but wants me to wear an oximeter on my finger tonight so she can make sure my oxygenation's okay. There's no reason to think it won't be; she's just being thorough, which I appreciate.

She faxed the new script over to the Durable-Medical-Equipment-Company-Who-Shall-Remain-Nameless, who were actually much more responsive and helpful than usual, after I got past my twenty minutes on hold. Turns out that, as Ken told me in response to my last post, the new machines are much smaller: my new one should be about half the size of my old one, and the humidifier -- heated, this time -- will be integrated, which means that I'll also lose one hose, the external reservoir, and the plastic platform on which everything sits. That makes three fewer items to pack when I travel. I'm tremendously excited about this.

Early this evening, our doorbell rang, and we discovered a bright-eyed AT&T salesman (who looks twelve, but everyone under thirty looks twelve to me these days) standing on our doorstep. He'd come to try to sell us fiber-optic phone and internet service, and it worked. We'll also get a month of free TV; we plan to cancel after that, if I can pry Gary away from the screen. Our installation date is August 1.

A smaller CPAP! Faster and more reliable internet! Will wonders never cease?

We are a simple people, easily amused.

Frantic Trip Prep

I think I'm as packed for Chicago as I can be tonight. I'm really glad I don't have one of those 6:00 a.m. flights: I leave comfortably mid-morning. I could technically do more tonight, like packing up my laptop, but when I accidentally locked my car keys in the trunk with my suitcase, I knew I was getting too tired to think straight. (I put the suitcase in the trunk tonight so Bali wouldn't savage it with his claws: he evidently views it as a new and wonderful scratching post.) I'm really glad we have extra keys!

My doctor's office called today to say that they still don't have my records from the old place -- the first request got lost -- but as soon as the records arrive, they'll send me the name of my diagnosing pulmonologist so I can get the script. Yay. Meanwhile, the nice CPAP repairman from yesterday called to tell me about a way he could use a loophole to sell me a machine, but since his price was twice as much as CPAP.com's, I'll pass. I buy my masks and hoses from CPAP.com, and they've always been very fast and helpful, so I trust them.

I swam this afternoon (crucial to stretch out the back before hours of air travel) and then got my mother's birthday package mailed out. Her birthday isn't until July 6, but I had everything ready, so I figured I'd send it.

I'm still waaaaaaay behind on e-mail. Please forgive me, everyone.

And now I'm going to crash. I should have internet access in Chicago, and I'll post as time and energy permit.

Visit with Carol

I had a lovely time with Carol, and the drives both there and back went very smoothly (although gas in Lee Vining is $5.09 a gallon: ack!). This is a picture I took of Carol on our evening walk. We had a great time talking about writing, trading rattlesnake stories (we've both had close encounters) and sharing our love of the West.

Mind you, Carol's eighty-six and in better shape than I am. This is the hill we climbed: my good knee gave out before Carol even got tired! She told me that she did her last "real" hike when she was eighty-two, when she was annoyed that she could only manage an hour and a half out and back. She complained about this to some doctors she met. The doctors were very amused (although, I'm afraid, not very helpful to Carol).

The hill's also the view in back of Carol's house, by the way. Bishop is a beautiful and dramatic place!

This is the view from Carol's front yard. She lives half the year in New York City and spends summers in Bishop: quite a contrast! She's invited me and Gary to come down for a visit so he can hike, and I think I may have talked him into it. He'd love the steep slopes!

This is what we saw on our walk, looking across Owens Valley. To get the full effect, you really have to click to enlarge . . . and believe me, it's much more awe-inspiring in person!

Carol's been wondering about this very large round boulder. She says there are no other rocks like it in the area, and she wants to know what shaped it like that. I had a vague memory that glaciers can do that; Carol asked a geologist, who didn't know. Does anyone here have theories?

Here's another interesting rock formation we saw on our walk. Even though my knee gave out in short order, it felt really good to get some exercise after spending over four hours in the car.

So, as I said, great visit. Carol had to be at the airport by noon today, and just to be safe, we decided to leave at 7:00. She set an alarm for five and said she'd wake me at 5:30 if I hadn't gotten up yet. But, lo and behold, I was awakened at 4:50 by the whining, wheezing sound of my CPAP motor dying.

We were on the road shortly after six, and I dropped Carol off at the Reno airport shortly after ten. Then I went home, unpacked, and tackled the CPAP problem, which was somewhat pressing, since I'm leaving for Chicago on Saturday and need a working machine.

I started by calling my Durable Medical Equipment (DME) company, who shall remain nameless but have, in the past, generally been the least helpful people on earth (at least in Reno; I had a good experience in the Bay Area when my motor died there two years ago). They ran true to form today. I was told a) that I'd need a prescription to get a new machine, b) that my insurance wouldn't pay for it because I've only had this one two years, not five, and c) that CPAPs cost "thousands of dollars," a claim I promptly disproved by logging onto CPAP.com, where I'd still need a prescription but where the machines only cost hundreds of dollars for units smaller and lighter than mine.

"If the DME's charging thousands of dollars, my copay will be hundreds of dollars," I told Gary.

"Just buy one online," he said. Nice hubby!

But in the meantime, the DME people had -- somewhat helpfully, hallelujah -- given me the name of a CPAP repair shop in town. I took the machine over there, where the nice repair folks (all two of them, and it's a local, family-owned business, too), confirmed my diagnosis of a dying motor. Yes, they could fix it, but they'd have to wait for the part, which would cost hundreds of dollars (are we sensing a theme here?). I vented my frustration about the DME place; they rolled their eyes and said, "You wouldn't believe how often we hear that." I told them I was seriously thinking of just buying a machine online. They nodded vigorously and said, "That's what you should do. That's what we'd do."

In the meantime, they rented me a working model of my current machine for $45/month. They accepted my word for my pressure setting, and didn't require a prescription. Is this logical, I ask you? (And they can't sell me a machine because of complicated regulations.)

So I went home with the working machine and set about figuring out how to get a prescription. I don't remember the name of the pulmonologist who wrote the script back in . . . 2001? 2002? Long time ago! The sleep lab where I was tested appears not to exist any more, and has probably been bought out by a bigger place.

So I e-mailed my family doc to see if he can write the script or if he has the name of my pulmonologist in his records. If not, I guess I'll have to be sleep-tested again. What a drag!

Oh, and: the people at the CPAP repair place warned me against the lightest, smallest, least expensive machine, the one I was going to buy, which evidently breaks constantly. They recommended another machine they said was smaller than my current one. But online reviews say it's not that small or light, and if I'm not going to get a much more portable machine, I'd just as soon hassle with the insurance company to replace my current one.

Aaaaaarghhhhh. Well, I'll deal with all of this when I'm back from Chicago.

Blogging from the Airport

I got to the airport ridiculously early, anticipating hassles. My new African knitting bag won't quite fit into my suitcase, so I thought I might have to check something; and indeed, a woman downstairs gave me a hard time. But the TSA folks were very mellow and told me I'd be fine because everything I have with me is small.

The only hassle was that, after I'd carefully removed my CPAP from my luggage and put it in the bin with my laptop, it had to be hand-inspected after all! If I'd known they were going to do that, I'd have let them take it out of the suitcase.

Sigh.

So now I'm hours early for my flight: more time to grade and knit! And blog, of course. The Vegas airport has genuine 100% free wireless, which is very decent of them.

The second skein of yarn's going more easily than the first did. Yay!

Bishops and Lions and Books, Oh My!

The tenth Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada will be the Rev. Dan Edwards, elected on the second ballot. He was close to the top of my list, so I'm very happy. And since the process was completed so quickly, we get the afternoon and evening off, which is great, because I'm having massive allergy attacks and have been sneezing so much that my back's gone into spasms.

I sneezed and knitted my way through the election, as friends supplied me with tissues (I quickly ran out of my own) and ibuprofen for the back pain. I always seem to get sick at convention; I think it's probably because conventions in Nevada are almost always held in and around casino hotels, and even if you have a nonsmoking room, as I do, you're always going to have to breathe some smoke on the casino floor, which one invariably has to cross to get from anywhere to anywhere else.

I'm still having fun, though!

Getting here was a tiny bit stressful. My knitting needles sailed through security with nary a raised eyebrow, but there's a new CPAP rule. When I first started using CPAP, each machine had to be inspected by hand. Then they stopped doing that. Then they started again. Now they've decided that CPAPs don't have to be inspected individually, but do need to be removed from luggage and put in their own bins, like laptop computers. Oy!

Then my plane was delayed for an hour, which meant that we arrived in Vegas at 4:00 instead of 3:00. The hotel airport shuttle was scheduled to leave at 4:15; the next one wasn't until 6:30. The minute the plane landed, I called the hotel and asked if they could ask the shuttle to wait for me, but they explained that they have no way to contact the shuttle: no radio, no cellphone. Double oy!

So I raced through the Vegas airport, which is approximately the size of New Zealand, and after going to two wrong spots, finally found my hotel shuttle -- just as it was pulling out of its parking spot. I raced in front of it, waving my arms, and the driver pulled back into the parking space. Yay! Talk about the nick of time!

After I'd checked into my room, which has a nice view of the mountains, I went downstairs to buy some bottled water for my CPAP. In the hotel gift shop, I ran into our friends Ned and Janet, and we decided to have dinner together. Ned had celebrated his birthday at the MGM Grand, and some friends gave him $50 worth of chips; he suggested going there and cashing in the chips to use towards dinner, which we did (he and Janet had driven down, so they had a car).

I have to say, I really do love the sheer exuberance of the Strip. All that energy makes me happy! At the MGM, we went to an absolutely terrific sushi restaurant: the food was great, the service was prompt -- something I'm not used to in hotels -- and all three of us loved our food. The decor was amazing, too: behind the sushi bar was a light-show type display which changed colors and designs every few minutes. It was very beautiful. And Ned and Janet very graciously bought my dinner, a treat I hadn't expected!

And then we went to the lion habitat. The MGM Grand has lions, see; they're on a ranch, but there's also a lovely lion habitat at the hotel -- with trees and water and lots of romping room -- where two lions at a time are on display in six-hour shifts. Two male lions were there when we went to look at them, and they were just lovely, with their faces like flowers and their huge paws. For a while, they were directly on the other side of the glass from us, and one of them had his paw up against the glass. I was close enough to see their amber eyes and their eyelashes. Two human keepers were in the enclosure; they had two large, much-bitten rubber balls, and one of the lions was playing, lazily batting the ball when the keeper tossed it to him. And then the lions would roll on their backs, or lick each other. They acted just like giant house cats. I was quite smitten with them, although I'm not quite as brave as Janet, who said she would have gone into the enclosure herself in a red-hot second.

Seeing the lions made the weekend for me: I don't even care that I'm sneezing and spasming! I have to get Gary to the MGM Grand -- he's never seen the Strip -- to eat sushi and look at lions.

Oh, I forgot to mention that we got pretty fabulous convention goodies, including zippered badge holders containing not only our badge, but meal tickets and -- get this -- business cards with our names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses in case we meet new friends we want to have that info. The goody bag also included beautiful crocheted crosses made by a prison inmate, a bag of snacks, and -- because this is Las Vegas -- a deck of Elvis playing cards.

The dealer's room isn't quite as large or varied as usual, but what's there is nice. I walked over to the National Cathedral Bookstore table and found myself looking down at a display of books about knitting! How perfect is that? So I bought a copy of Knitting Heaven and Earth, by Susan Gordon Lydon.

On the downside, the hotel indeed charges twelve dollars a day for internet access. But I really wanted to post this stuff, not to mention checking e-mail, so I went for it.

At 6:00, I'm meeting folks from my parish for dinner, and then I'll probably come back to the room and try to get some grading done.

No Place Like Home

Before I forget, this week's Grand Rounds is up, and I'm once again proud to be included.

I'm back home in Reno now, with Gary and the cats and my very own messy study. I had a fabulous time in Iowa, and Inez and I are already planning a return trip, but it's still nice to be done with traveling for a while. Inez should be sending me some pictures of Ricky and the mutilated toothbrush, so I'll post those when I have them.

In the meantime, here's the post I wrote on Sunday.

* * *

I’m composing this blog entry on WordPerfect, thousands of feet in the air, somewhere between Salt Lake City and Omaha.

This morning, I was very proud of getting everything I needed into three small carry-on bags. I left my shampoo and toothpaste at home, since buying supplies in Iowa made more sense than checking luggage simply for the sake of toiletries. And so, after getting up at the obscene hour of 4:30 a.m., I piled my little bags into the car and drove to the airport, wondering what security would be like.

The lines were much longer than usual, especially given how early it was. Before we even got to the screeners, someone asked all of us if we had any lotions or gels. I said no, wondering if I was cheating by not reporting my two little containers of Lip Medex. But I did confess to having a CPAP, and was duly sent to the line for people who needed extra attention, like the couple in front of me who’d both had hip replacements.

When I put my CPAP bag on the conveyer belt, I called to the screener, “There’s a CPAP in here, so it will need to be hand-checked.”

The screener glared at me and snapped, “Thank you. I’ll take care of that when I see it on the screen.” Was it my imagination, or was he thinking, If this stupid woman hadn’t said anything, I could have just ignored it?

But since I had said something, of course I was taken aside by a screener. My Lip Medex sailed through the machine without incident, which makes me wonder what would have happened if I’d tried to sneak some hand lotion through. Lizard skin is one of the hazards of living in Reno, and my hands are especially dry because I wash them so often. The dehydrating effect of airplanes never helps.

When my CPAP’s been screened in the past, it’s been taken out, examined, and given chemical tests involving strips of paper and special readers. This morning, the screener opened my suitcase, blinked at the machine without even touching it, yawned, closed the suitcase again, and told me I could go. The entire process took about five seconds. If the CPAP had been stuffed with dynamite, he wouldn’t have known.

Now, maybe this is just because I’m so pure and innocent looking, especially when I’m not actually wearing the CPAP. (My friend Inez, when she saw the masked crusader picture on my blog, commented gleefully, “Darth Palwick!”) But the process didn’t increase my confidence in national security. Gary tells me that someone’s coined the term “security theater” to describe nonsensical security precautions that exist purely for show, to make travelers feel safer by subjecting them to baroque inconveniences. This wasn’t even security theater. This was security snoozefest. These guys weren’t even pretending to be worried.

And that, on the whole, does make me feel safer. But now I really wish I’d brought my hand lotion.

So I got to my gate nice and early, especially since my flight had been delayed half an hour. There were signs all over the place advertising AT&T wireless access for only $3.95, so I happily bought a cup of coffee and then turned on my laptop, thinking I’d raise my cybercool index by writing a blog entry in the airport. What fun!

AT&T accepted my credit card and told me I was connected. But no webpage except the AT&T ad would come up. I kept getting messages that pop-ups had been blocked, and I repeatedly turned off pop-up blocking, and the same thing kept happening. I was in AT&T hell.

And then the gate attendants made a cheery announcement that the flight delay had been canceled. “We were originally scheduled to leave half an hour late, but gosh, the plane’s here, and the crew’s here, and all of you are here, so we’re leaving now! Get out your boarding passes, folks, and dump those beverages, because you can’t bring any liquids aboard!”

A plane leaving early? Has anyone ever heard of this? I’d taken two sips of my coffee, and I had to throw it out. Added to the AT&T rip-off, that means I wasted about six dollars at the airport this morning. As airport spending goes, that’s a pittance, but it’s still annoying.

But the first flight went very smoothly, with the added bonus of a flight attendant with a flair for stand-up comedy. (“We appreciate your business, and we want your feedback. We think we’re doing a good job, but we may just be in denial.”) When she wasn’t making funny announcements or handing out water, she sat right next to me, and we had a nice chat. Before she was a flight attendant, she worked in a funeral home; she says that was great training for her current job, because it taught her how to stay calm around very upset people. We also talked about our pets: instant bonding! And I got some grading done.

So far, the second flight’s been fine too. I’m happily working on Vera VAIO, my adorable ultralight laptop -- named after Jayne’s gun in Firefly -- and listening to my favorite music on Windows Media Player, using noise-reducing headphones to quiet the din of the plane engine. (Don’t spend your money on $300 Bose headphones. I have Sennheisers, which are less than half the price, and they work fine.) Things could be a lot worse, even if my hands are dryer than Death Valley in August.

* * *

Leaving Omaha this afternoon, I didn't mention my CPAP to the screeners, and it sailed right through without any extra inspection. And, of course, water and small amounts of lotion are allowed again as of today, although I didn't discover this in time to bring any with me.

Maybe somebody's finally figured out that Security Theater is more trouble than it's worth?

The Masked Crusader!

Blog readers! Do you suffer from constant fatigue? Do you doze off during the day? Do significant others and housepets refuse to sleep in the same room with you, because you snore loudly enough to shake walls and rattle windows? Do people who've heard you snore report a characteristic pattern of increasingly loud snoring, ending in a choking gasp?

If you answered "yes" to these questions, then you, too, could be suffering from a sleep disorder!

The best-known sleep disorder is apnea, a potentially life-threatening condition in which patients stop breathing during their sleep. The brain alerts the body to wake up and breathe; the body dutifully obeys, interrupting sleep. As a result, the patient will be exhausted in the morning, but won't remember ever having woken up. In addition to creating sleep deprivation, a serious condition all by itself, apnea greatly increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Gary and I learned about apnea when his mom was diagnosed and started using CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure), a machine that blows pressurized air through a mask into your nose so your airway will remain open and you'll keep breathing. Because we were educated about sleep disorders, we had a good hunch about what was going on several years later, when I began suffering from severe daytime fatigue, combined with increasingly dramatic snoring at night.

Based on my symptoms and Gary's description of my snoring, my doctor was convinced I had apnea. When I went for my sleep test, it turned out that I didn't have apnea; I have a similar but less serious condition called Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome (UARS). My airway narrows when I sleep, but doesn't close completely. My sleep is still interrupted by "wake up!" messages from my brain -- an average of sixteen times an hour, according to the sleep test -- but I don't stop breathing. This is a Good Thing.

The treatment is the same, though. Yes, that's a picture of me in my CPAP mask at the beginning of this post. My sister took the photo two years ago during a summer roadtrip, during which she memorably described the CPAP headgear as looking "like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a jock strap." Pretty glamorous, huh?

But I feel so much better on CPAP that I've now become an absolute evangelist for sleep testing. I recently exhorted a friend to have it done; it turns out that she has severe apnea, and in the month or so that she's been on CPAP, her blood pressure has gone down to its healthiest level in years.

Visiting my father a year or so ago, I became convinced by his snoring, and his daytime fatigue, that he had apnea and should be tested. He talked to his doctor at the VA, but because he couldn't describe his own symptoms very well (we can't hear ourselves snore!), they didn't give him the test. So this summer, I wrote a letter to his doctors describing his snoring.

It worked. They gave him the sleep test. He called me a week ago to report that he indeed has apnea; we were both very excited by this news, because starting on CPAP could make him feel so much better. Because the VA moves slowly, he has to wait a while for the equipment, but he's feeling hopeful about the outcome.

Yesterday, he called me with the official results of his sleep test. According to the VA, 5-15 sleep interruptions per hour indicate a mild disorder; 16-30 indicate a moderate disorder, and anything over 30 is severe. My father had an average of fifty interruptions an hour. And he's already had heart trouble and one mild stroke.

I can't tell you how happy I am that I said something!

So if you have these symptoms, or if someone you love has these symptoms, please, please, please look into sleep testing!

Q: If I think I have a sleep disorder, what should I do?

A: Consult your doctor. The first step will probably be bloodwork to rule out other possible causes of fatigue, like thyroid problems. If everything else checks out, you'll be sent for a consultation with a pulmonologist. Bring a significant other with you! If you don't have a significant other, set up a recorder next to your bed so you'll have a tape of your own snoring. As my father's case illustrates, it's very important for the doctor to hear the testimony of someone who's actually heard you snore.

Q: What's the sleep test like?

A: Oh, it's very entertaining. You show up a few hours before bedtime at a lab with a bunch of bedrooms. Techs spend forty-five minutes or so hooking you up to so many wires, monitors, belts and microphones that you look like someone getting ready to go up in the space shuttle. (Really, I wish I had a picture of myself wired for the sleep test.) And then they tell you to go to sleep.

All the wires and monitors are pretty lightweight, and the labs invest in good beds, but many people still have trouble sleeping. Part of the problem is that sleep labs, by definition, are filled with people who snore really loudly. Before my test, I was told that if I showed signs of apnea, I'd be woken up halfway through the night to be fitted with CPAP. At that point, I desperately wanted CPAP, so I lay awake, listening to the building vibrate from other people's snoring. Periodically somebody's snoring would stop, which meant that person had been woken up and fitted with CPAP. I finally dozed off . . . and was woken up and fitted with CPAP, to my great joy!

And then I woke up and discovered that I wasn't wearing CPAP. I'd never been wearing CPAP. I wanted CPAP so badly that I'd dreamed about getting it. I went home literally weeping with exhaustion and frustration. Luckily, it turned out that all the wires and monitors had picked up proof that I had UARS, so I got my CPAP anyway.

Q: But isn't CPAP, well, uncomfortable?

A: It can be. The biggest challenge is finding the right headgear, but there are lots of different kinds -- ranging from simple nasal cannula, like oxygen tubing only thicker, to full-face masks -- so you'll have a wide range of choices. If the first thing you try doesn't work, don't give up! Your medical provider will work with you on this.

I have a very small head, and wound up having to wear a pediatric mask. It took me about a month to figure that out and to find headgear that worked for me. During that month, I was frustrated and miserable. Since then, I've been very happy.

Q: But isn't having to deal with the machine a pain in the neck?

A: No, not really. It's quite small, and very quiet and easy to clean, and there are even battery-powered models for camping. Plane travel's a bit of a hassle, because the machine has to be carry-on. (Do not put your CPAP in checked luggage, because it will get thrown around and will break. I'm speaking from experience.) Also, CPAP machines often have to go through special tests at airports to make sure they aren't bombs. But the folks who work at security see hundreds of these machines a day, so they're friendly and sympathetic. They don't really think CPAP machines might be bombs, but their bosses do. The screeners are just doing their jobs. And you may have a chance to encourage your sleepy security screener, whose wife complains about his snoring, to go get his very own sleep test. You could be saving a life!

Q: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, come on . . . you know! Doesn't it, doesn't it interfere with -- oh, you know! Doesn't your husband hate it that you're wearing this thing that looks like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a jock strap? And doesn't that, um, ah, have a negative effect on your marriage?

A: Oh! So that's what you really wanted to know!

No, CPAP does not interfere with recreational intimacy. I wear CPAP when I'm asleep. My husband and I engage in recreational intimacy when we're awake. Sleep deprivation has a far more negative effect on recreational intimacy than CPAP does.

Gary loves my CPAP, because I don't snore any more.

Or as the sign in my pulmonologist's office puts it:

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you.
Snore, and you sleep alone."

So, all you snorers, what are you waiting for? Go get that sleep test!