Running the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous
BOX SCORE |
|
|
|
Element |
Current |
Std. Range |
Trend |
Hemoglobin |
11.6 |
13-17 |
v |
Platelets |
58 |
140-375 |
v |
ANC |
3730 |
1800-8300 |
^ |
Life is funny. From one moment to the next we seldom know exactly what to expect. When I was a kid, we used to have fun teasing Dad about his snoring, especially on summer vacations at Hood Canal. Our nuclear family and a couple of cousins all slept in "The Shed," one of two rustic cabins that came with the waterfront property owned by Aunt Mary and Uncle Eddie. Now Dad was a pro in the snoring department. There is an old nonsense song, collected by Carl Sandberg and performed by various artists, including the likes of Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia. The title is "A Horse Named Bill," perhaps you have heard it. Two of the verses go as follows:
I went up in a balloon so big,
It made all the people look like a pig...
...or like a mice, or like a katydid,
Or also like flyses and fleasons.
Now the balloon came down with its bottom side higher
And fell on the wife of a country squire.
And she made noise like a steam whistle, and like a hound dog,
And also like dynamite.
That last line will give you an idea of what the rest of us tried to sleep through, when Dad got his snore on.
In my last post, I mentioned that I was getting a CPAP machine to help with my nighttime breathing, because I inherited Dad's ability to snore and snort and generally raise Cain while I am sleeping. It was enough to drive Jill into another room so that she could get some rest.
Last night was the first time I slept with a CPAP machine. It was awkward at first, but eventually I fell asleep...with Jill by my side. This morning, I awoke, and she was still there! Amazing. When I did my sleep apnea test, I registered 18.9 apneic (not breathing) or hypopneic (labored breathing) events per hour. I used to wake myself up with loud snorts. Last night with the help of CPAP, I registered 3.1 events, and Jill said she only heard me snort once before she promptly went back to sleep.
I will need to learn more about sleeping with this device, because although my snoring was reduced to a whisper, lying in one position all night left me with some cramping muscles in my lower back. On the other hand, this is the first night in years that I didn't get up to use the bathroom. Perhaps, all this time I have been unfairly blaming my bladder for the shortcomings of my respiratory system!
Something that I wanted to share in my last post but didn't was a special moment I had with our son, Patrick on Sunday. If you read that post, you will know that he and I had a chat away from the rest of the family during their visit. Patrick shared with me that he had had a time of significant anxiety recently. The event followed a conversation that he had with his wife Katie. She asked him whether I had shared with him any knowledge about my prognosis as a cancer patient. So, naturally, he wanted to know whether there is any information I may have held back from him.
The truth is that my prognosis is that I will be on chemotherapy for the rest of my life, but I have never been told to expect that I have a certain number of days or weeks or months or years left to live. He was comforted to hear that, I think. I emphasized to him that none of us really knows how much time we have on this earth, and it is important to focus on being present in the moments we do have. He agreed.
That conversation set off a lot of reminiscing about the years when he was growing up. After his mother and I separated, I had custody of Patrick every other week until he was about to graduate from high school. We used to talk about all kinds of things, and we both had the feeling that it was "you and me against the world," so to speak. During our conversation, Patrick shared with me that there is a song called "Monsters" that he heard performed by one of the winners on American Idol. He told me that it brings him to tears every time he hears it, because it makes him think of the special relationship we have always shared. It did me, too. Here is a link, but I encourage you to have a tissue handy when you watch it:
And finally, this. Earlier this week, I installed a couple of motion activated sprinklers to repel critters from eating our garden crops. This was prompted by a visit from a spike buck, who seemed to be licking his chops while eyeing our containers of veggies, not to mention our beautiful rose bushes.
This morning, I happened to glance out of the patio window to see a squirrel walk in front of one of the sprinklers, causing it to activate and give him a bath. He ran across the yard, periodically jumping up an spinning round or doing cartwheels. He went up a tree trunk a couple of feet and then came back down and did some more gyrations worthy of a whirling dervish. After a while, he returned to try and get to the bird feeder and got another bath. This time he was so frightened that he retreated, gyrating all the way, to the fir trees on the back of our lot, where he promptly climbed up to his nest.
Hope he sleeps as well as I did last night! It was a blessing to me and to Jill, who said, "That thing [CPAP] is a game changer!"
Today, I am thanking God for technology that helps me and Jill sleep better, for a son whose love for me (which I reciprocate) is as deep as any I have known on earth with the exception of my wife's, and for the fun of watching a squirrel try to figure out why he can't get to the bird feeder without an unexpected drenching. He apparently doesn't like being wet!
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