Catching up before the big day

Sixty is the decade of wisdom...because I say so.

Today is my last day for being sixty years old.  I've been gone over the weekend with lady friends touring gardens, shopping and enjoying fine dining so have not been at the keyboard for a while.  There is so much to catch up on!

On Friday I had my follow up visit with Dr Casey (not Ben) to see how the CPAP machine is doing for me.  He went over the results of my sleep study again as a refresher and I saw the number 75.5 listed for the number of times I stopped breathing.  When I commented on that being a lot of times during the night to stop breathing he looked gently into my eyes and again repeated that I have severe sleep apnea.  That was the average number of times AN HOUR.  Even with my limited math skills I understood that more than once a minute it was as if someone had choked me by the throat to the point of not breathing.  Left Brain swears it wasn't him, so the doctor must be right.

He then explained how the fight or flight reflex kicks in at that moment (and each one thereafter) to regain consciousness in order to breathe.  It's no wonder that with this going on, added with the last couple of years dealing with my mother's death and then our decision to radically change our lifestyle to a mobile one, I may have been just a little out of it.  I attributed my walking dead routine to  being stressed out and depressed.  The Prozac has helped immeasurably but finally getting restorative sleep....amazing.

Inside the CPAP machine is a little disk that records all the activity and I could see very plainly the interrupted usage in the beginning when I had the full face mask that often got tossed off in frustration.  Once I got the pillow (nose only) mask it showed consistent usage of 8 hours or more each night.

The other thing I've noticed is the absence of pain in my hands, arms, shoulders, back and neck.  This is probably partly due to no longer gardening or dollmaking, but I'm sure has a lot to do with the lack of oxygen from not breathing.  It's no wonder I've gotten to where I dread nighttime.

The dreams have returned in full force again and I wish I could recall them better.  I plan to keep a tablet and pen by the bedside to make notes as I could certainly write short stories (at the least) if I could recall them.  They are vivid with full technicolor and sound, it's like watching a movie.  This has been refreshing, I've missed my dreams.

After the appointment I went to Pickermans for my favorite loaded baked potato soup while I read and relaxed totally alone....one of my favorite things in the whole world.  Then I hooked up with the Divine Miss M and we went to Barnes and Noble where I got the Cooking for Two magazine  put out annually by America's Test Kitchen and the Spring issue of Writing Basics put out by Writer's Digest.

When we returned home we sat out on her deck surrounded by tropical flowers and overlooking the masterpiece of her gardening skills and chatted some more.  It was so good to be able to speak "womanspeak" to my friend again.  Left Brain is a good listener, but there is just no substitute for the company of woman friends.

For supper she and Bob took me to Red Sails to sample their favorite pizza - the Hawaiian Punch.  This pizza has Canadian bacon, pepperoni, pineapple and jalapenos.  You know with the Divine Miss M there's always going to be jalapenos.  It sounds awful but is the best thing I've ever had.  Now I must try to recreate it because I don't know where else I'd ever find it again.

Having a belly full of food and the satisfaction of laughter and conversation I went to bed to read for a bit before going to sleep.  On the dresser sat the tiny alarm she set for me.  This sounds like an act of consideration but if you could have seen the evil smile and the way she said "this will scare the hell out of you when it goes off" you'd understand my desire to wake before it did.  And I was successful.  I'd heard the demo of it in the kitchen before it came to sleep with me and had no desire to be in the same room when it went off again.

There's something about her guest room that is just amazing.  I don't know if it's the comfort of the bed, the soft snuggly comforter, the quality of the sheets or what; but I always sleep like a baby there.  Maybe it's just the exhaustion of talking and laughing for hours before hand.  Whatever it is, I like it.

So I enjoyed my peaceful evening and good night's sleep before jumping into the weekend with Le Jardiste the next day and our trip to the Tangletown Garden Tour.

This is where I will end my blog for now as I have not downloaded the photos from the tour to do that justice.  That and I need to clean up the place before the kids come with their mother and her friend and her two kids for the picnic lunch at the campground.

Long Live (and sleep deeply) The Queen