I've Been to the Desert on a Mask with no Hose

I used to not think much about sleep. Lay down at night, close your eyes, dream. Wake, go about your day, repeat. My dad, so we heard, was a narcoleptic who could sleep anywhere, anytime, and eventually fell asleep in his Volkswagen on the way home from work. I never quite had that problem, but I always had a terrible time staying awake around one o'clock in the afternoon.

And then I started having the dreams, the drowning dreams. Some series of events would conspire to place me under water, where I'd find myself with no way out, no way to the surface. Some milliseconds before the air ran out, I'd wake up, gasping for breath.

I always hated that dream.

I started reading about something called sleep apnea, put two and two together, and got an appointment one day for a sleep test. After spending the night wired up to electrodes, I got the confirmation that I sleep apnea was indeed what I had. I'd stop breathing during the night, thanks to a closed airway, and I'd stay that way until my brain found some way to wake me up so I'd start breathing. Planting the image that I was under water was one of the more creative ways my brain found to rouse me.

The "cure" for sleep apnea is a mask that you wear over your nose. It feeds pressurized air to your breathing passages, keeping your airway open. I got used to the pressurized air right away. It makes it easy to breathe in, but more difficult to breathe out since you're exhaling, essentially, into a balloon. The mask is another thing, since it tends to slip and leak air, and there's always a hose to keep out of the way.

I've only had a problem with it once, and that was when the county cut the electricity late one night so they could replace a transformer. I forgot that they were going to do with it. No electricity means no air to my mask, and I woke up feeling like I was being suffocated.

But sometime last night, I found a new way to mess with the machine. It was one of those fitful nights where I kept waking up, bothered by something or other, never quite comfortable. And when it finally was time to get up, I heard the unmistakable sound of air coming out of the machine (CPAP) that feeds air - filtered, humidified, pressurized air - to my mask. Somewhere in my travels, I'd knocked the hose loose from my mask. This is much better than having the electricity cut, since it's easy to breathe through a mask with no hose, but it doesn't exactly solve any problems.

But at least I didn't have the dream.