Nose Trouble
Apr. 1st, 2004 11:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyCholmondley's chewed through my nose, again.
Ok, I confess, I took that sentence out of context, but isn't it lovely, just sitting there in lone splendor? In the first case, I rarely attempt the spelling Cholmondley. I usually just spell it Chumley. I tend to miss at least one of the l's, if I try to use the fancy spelling. In the second case, it's not really a nose, that's just what I call it. And in the third place, Chumley is a cat.
Do you know what a CPAP machine is? CPAP stands for Constant Positive Airway Pressure. It is, in fact, a machine that blows air up your nose all night so as to keep your soft palate from collapsing, which in turn prevents one from failing to inhale until the body shakes itself abruptly awake. The condition is sleep apnea. People with really bad cases of sleep apnea can be wakened up more than 100 times an hour. It's a very brief moment of consciousness, usually, and not remembered by the sufferer, who thinks that he's had a fiull night's sleep. Unfortunately, what with waking every 30 seconds or so, the victim never achieves REM sleep, which is almost as bad as not sleeping at all.
At any rate, my CPAP machine has a little black box that sits on the headboard, and a less than entirely comfortable mask that goes over my head and covers my nose, and a gray, ribbed hose that connects the two. I think that the hose looks a bit like an elephant's trunk, so I refer to the CPAP as my "elephant nose," or nose, for short.
Chumley is an compulsive chewer. For many years, he used to destroy cardboard boxes by standing in them, biting the wall of the box, and shaking his head until a bite-sized piece of cardboard came loose, at which point he'd toss it over his shoulder, and take another bite. It didn't take very long for him to reduce a copy paper box to the height of two inches all the way around. Surrounding the box would be a drift of bite-sized piece of cardboard. He also liked to chew on rope. Peculiar enough, but even more peculiar once I noticed that the rope he was chewing on was getting shorter, and shorter, and shorter.
You can see what's coming, of course. Chumley, meet nose. Nose, meet Chumley. The hose now has dozens of little holes in it, just the size of Chummer's fangs. This seriously impairs the machine's ability to provide a measured and constant pressure. I need a new hose. Fortunately, the last time I replaced it was more than six months ago, so the insurance company will pay for it. Unfortunately, I haven't yet come up with a workable plan for keeping Chumley from destroying it, again. Since it is a medical device, it costs the earth. On the other hand, I really have to get it fixed, because without the CPAP, I'm essentially asleep all the time. Dreadful, really.
In case you've been following this journal, I want to clarify that the idiopathic EDS (Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, now there's a creative name for a disorder) is separate from the sleep apnea. Even with the apnea fully treated, I fall asleep at non-useful times.
Ok, I confess, I took that sentence out of context, but isn't it lovely, just sitting there in lone splendor? In the first case, I rarely attempt the spelling Cholmondley. I usually just spell it Chumley. I tend to miss at least one of the l's, if I try to use the fancy spelling. In the second case, it's not really a nose, that's just what I call it. And in the third place, Chumley is a cat.
Do you know what a CPAP machine is? CPAP stands for Constant Positive Airway Pressure. It is, in fact, a machine that blows air up your nose all night so as to keep your soft palate from collapsing, which in turn prevents one from failing to inhale until the body shakes itself abruptly awake. The condition is sleep apnea. People with really bad cases of sleep apnea can be wakened up more than 100 times an hour. It's a very brief moment of consciousness, usually, and not remembered by the sufferer, who thinks that he's had a fiull night's sleep. Unfortunately, what with waking every 30 seconds or so, the victim never achieves REM sleep, which is almost as bad as not sleeping at all.
At any rate, my CPAP machine has a little black box that sits on the headboard, and a less than entirely comfortable mask that goes over my head and covers my nose, and a gray, ribbed hose that connects the two. I think that the hose looks a bit like an elephant's trunk, so I refer to the CPAP as my "elephant nose," or nose, for short.
Chumley is an compulsive chewer. For many years, he used to destroy cardboard boxes by standing in them, biting the wall of the box, and shaking his head until a bite-sized piece of cardboard came loose, at which point he'd toss it over his shoulder, and take another bite. It didn't take very long for him to reduce a copy paper box to the height of two inches all the way around. Surrounding the box would be a drift of bite-sized piece of cardboard. He also liked to chew on rope. Peculiar enough, but even more peculiar once I noticed that the rope he was chewing on was getting shorter, and shorter, and shorter.
You can see what's coming, of course. Chumley, meet nose. Nose, meet Chumley. The hose now has dozens of little holes in it, just the size of Chummer's fangs. This seriously impairs the machine's ability to provide a measured and constant pressure. I need a new hose. Fortunately, the last time I replaced it was more than six months ago, so the insurance company will pay for it. Unfortunately, I haven't yet come up with a workable plan for keeping Chumley from destroying it, again. Since it is a medical device, it costs the earth. On the other hand, I really have to get it fixed, because without the CPAP, I'm essentially asleep all the time. Dreadful, really.
In case you've been following this journal, I want to clarify that the idiopathic EDS (Excessive Daytime Sleepiness, now there's a creative name for a disorder) is separate from the sleep apnea. Even with the apnea fully treated, I fall asleep at non-useful times.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 09:54 am (UTC)K.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 10:06 am (UTC)Re: Nose Trouble
Date: 2004-04-01 11:04 am (UTC)i'd not use tabasco sauce because having that on something close to your face which you touch before sleeping would be hell waiting to happen. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 11:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 11:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 12:04 pm (UTC)My cat, too, has a licking/chewing problem...
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 01:42 pm (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 06:12 pm (UTC)No useful suggestions on the hose problem except you might try wrapping it in aluminum foil.
MKK
no subject
Date: 2004-04-01 06:18 pm (UTC)B
no subject
Date: 2004-04-09 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-09 12:34 am (UTC)If you haven't seen one, the situation is probably not exactly clear. The black box is on my headboard, about 18" above my head. There's a 6' grey hose that's attached to a mask on my face.That six feet allows me to roll over, toss, turn, all that good stuff. Getting tinfoil to stay in place for more than one night of active sleeping seems optimistic.
What I should really do is put my nose away every morning when I make my bed...oh, wait, I never make up my bed. Right. In fact, I keep mornings as simple and short as possible. At that, I'm rarely able to get up and out the door in time.
Damn cat, damn nose, damn me. Grump.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-09 10:02 am (UTC)I'm familiar with CPAPs; my ex-girlfriend used one. She had a big bedside table with a big drawer, so every morning she could just sweep the whole mess into the drawer. She's got mischevious cats and I shudder to think what they would have done with the long toy-like hose. :) But, at night when the machine was on, it made *just* enough noise that they'd stay away. I don't know what she would have done if they menaced it while she was sleeping, though.