"December 30, 2008

Where to begin?  I am going to censor myself slightly here, because I don't want to start any drama with anyone who might be reading this.

This has been the worst year of my life.  I know that kind of sounds melow-dramatic, but it's the truth.  I have had challenge after challenge this year, and the last few months have been no exception.

For a short time, I thought I was going to be a father.  Yeah, you read that right, a Dad.  The woman who represented the other part of the genetic cocktail and I had only been dating for 3 weeks when this happened.  For almost 2 months, I thought I was going to have my entire life turned upside down.  I changed a lot about myself during this time.  I got my finances in order, started staying home to save money, and went in to complete freakout mode.  When I received a text message indicated that the child was lost....I lost my mind.

Now let's back up a bit here.  I had been broken up with, had all kinds of health problems, nearly been fired from my job, my roommate moved out (while sad, this was planned and for the best, God bless you Al), and then I experience this.

I was sadly freaked out at first.  It wasn't like I was a 21 year old kid working at McDonald's and wouldn't be able to provide support.  I am 31 and in a career job that I love and I could do what I needed to do.  After enough time, and letting my Mom know, I started making plans for the future.

Then I get the other news.  I was heart broken.  I didn't know that I would be, but I was.  In a strange way, I was ready for this.  When I came to know that it would not happen, I was thrown for a loop.  I was depressed, and then somewhat relieved, and then mad at myself for being relieved.  I was confused, sad, and hurt.  The worst part was....I didn't have anyone to share this with.  All of my friends are going through their own shit right now.  Add to that the fact that I have had to lean on them soooo much this year....I felt like I had worn out some shoulders to cry on.

There has been some time since this occurance and I have had a bit of time for perspective.  I now know that everything happens for a reason and I feel a bit better.  However, it still hurts like hell....and this is the first holiday season that I have spent single since 1995 or so.

I am in a superfunk tonight and I am super lonely.  I want to share with someone, but I don't want to bring them down to my level or depress them. 

I have been in hermit mode for a while.  I have been staying away from people.  People let me down and break my heart, but that can't happen if I keep to myself and keep the rest of the world out.

I have only recently tried to get back on the ball and get back out in the world.  I am still really sad and messed up.  I am not sure why I wrote this tonight other than an update to anyone who might read it and a chance to put my thoughts to page again.

If you are reading this....then you probably have too much time on your hands and need to get back to work....but know this:

I cannot wait for this year to be over.  I am going to sponsor a huge New Year's Eve at Chunt's place and I will celebrate the end of this year and the beginning of the next with as much debauchery as my body can handle.

Wish me luck....I need it.

Unable to sustain this front
The tension too palpable
Struggle to stay upright
Moral compass with shaky needle

Disconnect and stay aloof
The undercurrent of hurt
The bottom is so close
Stay in the shallow end

Layered loathing wrought
Pitched down and peeled back
Skin tight and plucked bare
There'll be no shelter here

Silent hell bereft of warmth
Echoes of sadness resound
Sharp desolation inescapable
Hate fills to the brim

Greetings little children.  Welcome to another edition of Chad ramblings.  Pull up a seat and listen as I vomit forth disconnected ideas seemingly at random.

I haven't posted a new blog in a while.  This is unfair to you, my loyal friends.  I tend to only post blogs when I am at my worst.  Blogging for me is a way to express myself in a way other than my fists or excessive penile prodding.  When the chips are down, it makes me feel better to write about it.  If there are no new blogs, it means I am either in rehab or life is going well.  I almost made an Amy Winehouse joke, but it would have been too idiotic for even me.

So what's new?  I am getting my shit together.  Anyone who truly knows me knows about my sleep problems.  The BI-PAP machine is working wonders.  I am feeling better with 6 hours of sleep than I have with 8 or 9 hours of sleep in the past.  I was in such a good mood and felt so good today that I got on my own nerves.

I am in a good place now I feel.  I am feeling much better about life than I did immediately after the big break up and I am really moving on with my life.  I am getting my house in order as it were and I am taking care of business.  The new giant TV and HD service are keeping me at home rather than out drinking, so there's that.

Just dropping a line to talk about the positives and let everyone know that all is well.  I will be attending GenCon next week and having a great freaking time.  Always remember, don't let your meatloaf. 

So yeah.  I don't have a heart condition.

I went to the cardiologist today.  The cardiologist looked at the EKG and asked a few questions and then laughed, told me to lose some weight, told me that there wasn't a damned thing wrong with me, shook my hand and left the room.  So this is totally awesome news.  I am going to go have a beer to celebrate.  The health issues are at an end and I just have to be patient and make it without quality sleep for another day or two.

Sleep study tomorrow night, woohoo!  Saturday will make me look like a crack addict with all the energy.

Carry on…

I had my follow up visit with my sleep doc today.  I had prepared myself for the fact that I had apnea and went in with my war face on, to try to get a resolution as quickly as possible.

The doc started out by telling me that my results were fantastic....ally bad.  Oh good, he has a sense of humor.  I apparently have one of the worst cases he has ever seen.  On a scale on 1 to 10, I rate a 9.9.  During my study, I stopped breathing an average of 101 times an hour!  WTF?!?!  The lowest my blood oxygen went was 64%....which is close to low enough to kill.  I spent 330 minutes below 90% blood oxygen out of the 6 hour study, this is really bad.

The doc told me that if left untreated, there would be a plethora of terrible health issues, and then eventually death within a few years.....

So yeah, I got that going for me.

We discussed the treatment options, he seemed to want to lean further towards surgery.  I talked to him about my research.  About 98% of people can be treated with the C-PAP machine.  To remove the tonsils and other tissues at the back of the throat, that would probably work, but it is not guaranteed.  I also read that a goodly number of people had recurring apnea after the tonsilectomy, and would have to come back to get a C-PAP machine.

I told him about my terrible quality of life and career that was suffering.  He agreed that the C-PAP machine was the right treatment.  We left the room and he talked to his staff.  He said to the woman scheduling the next sleep study that I needed to be scheduled yesterday.  I got scheduled for Friday night.  This means they will hook me up to a C-PAP machine and monitor me to properly calibrate the machine.  This means that I will probably have my own machine on Saturday or Monday at the latest.

I am only slightly freaking out about this.  The treatment is coming and it should make things better, but I feel like shit now....I need to get back to normal now!  Okay.....I am going to sit and drink some beer and try to chill.  Wish me luck in holding it together and not letting the grumpiness take over, else blood may be spilled.

There IS a higher being, a higher form of consciousness, a God, a nature spirit, a grand computer that is in control of all reality.....and it fucking hates me and the feeling is mutual.

On top of other sleeping problems, I now am having trouble getting to sleep.  I have no energy, fall asleep during the day and while driving, and take 2 or 3 hour naps in the evening that leave me even more tired....and now I can't fall asleep at a decent time.  I want to hurt small furry animals and punch nuns at this time.  The worse part of the sleep apnea is not being able to control when I fall asleep.  The early afternoon sucks out loud.  I am very embarrassed at work, everyone knows about my problem and seems very supportive, but I hate feeling weak and out of control.

Tomorrow is the day.  I will get the results from my sleep study tomorrow.  I am going in for them to tell me that I have moderate to severe sleep apnea......which I already know!  I am going to pressure them in to scheduling the next study as soon as humanly possible, I really want to get this machine and start feeling better.....

Going to try to go lay down now.....wish me luck or death.

So I went to the sleep study and checked in at 8pm last night.  I was greeted by a nice fellow, maybe late 30's, named George.  George was a really nice guy and was Ukrainian, which makes him that much cooler in my book.

He showed me to a study suite, explained everything that was going to happen, and was very patient and cool.  He wired me up to a transmitter and calibrated all the equipment.  As I laid there and watched the small TV in the suite, I looked up at the corner, and saw a camera.  They were going to watch me sleep......

It comes time for lights out, and I am still awake.  Keep in mind that with the sleep apnea that I have had for some time, it takes me less that 5 minutes to fall asleep.  It took me well over an hour to finally pass out.  Then the wire draped over my left ear started to move and tickle a bit, and then the oxygen measurement cord beneath my nose started to aggravate me, then the electrode on my left cheek that monitored my eye movement started to aggravate me.  It was going to sleep for short intervals and then waking up briefly every hour or so.  I have had worse nights of sleep, but it was very weird.

Finally, at 6:00am, George comes back and wakes me up.  He helps me untangle myself from the mess of wires and informs me that he is not really qualified to talk to me about results and that I will have to wait until next Wednesday, which is my next scheduled follow up.  He did talk to me about his experience with the treatment options.  George had been working in the field of sleep for 13 years and knew his way around.  When I told him that the tonsilectomy sounded like the better way to go, he informed me that it only had about a 40% success rate.  The soft tissue that is removed does initially help, but it is impossible to tell how much to remove and which tissue is causing the problem.

He said that the C-PAP machine was 95% effective in treating sleep apnea and that it was FAR less expensive.  He said that people who opted for the tonsilectomy often times had to come back as the apnea had returned and had to get a C-PAP machine anyway.  This made sense to me, and I would really hate to be out of comission for 2 weeks after having surgery.  George was able to say that my results would be quite startling, and that if I decided to go with the C-PAP, my quality of life would GREATLY increase.  I just wonder what the camera recorded last night, tossing and turning, talking in my sleep, morning wood, giant flatulence.....he didn't com in the room laughing, so it's a good sign.

He mentioned that many patients who were treated with the C-PAP were also able to regulate blood pressure without medicine.  I have been on blood pressure meds for the last 4 years and I would really like to get off of them.

I don't want to go in to the treatment thinking that this will be some kind of magic bullet and solve everything that ails me, but it does sounds as if this apnea has been the root cause for many health issues that I have had recently.  I am very glad that I am a bit better informed, I just wish I didn't have to wait until next week to get the full results.

I want to thank all of you who read my blog and that have been very supportive.  This is something that I feel I have to go through myself because I am stronger than most and I can deal with just about anything now (what a fucked up year).  However, I know I have help if I need it.  You people have been very caring and understanding and I truly appreciate you all.  I will post more news as I have it.

I will driving in to the H-Town early Friday morning.  I will be spending the 4th with the family, but if anyone would like to get in to some trouble on Saturday, give me a ring.  While we are all at it, maybe some folks can continually kick me in the sack for not taking care of this sooner.

I will now try to get back to work, but productivity and I aren't on speaking terms today and I will probably be giggling over silly cat pictures until quitting time.

I have not talked about serious stuff in my blog for a while, but I feel the need to today.  I went to a specialist for my sleep apnea.  It has been going on for some time, but it has been much worse since March and the last time I got sick.  The doc took a look at my throat for 3 seconds and then removed the tongue depressor and switched off his pen light.  He found what he was looking for in 3 seconds flat.  My tonsils are the size of golf balls and therefore there is little room to breathe when I am sleeping.

His treatment options included a tonsilectomy and or a C-PAP machine.  I think I would prefer the tonsilectomy as it seems to directly attack the problem.  This is harder to recover from as an adult, but it seems like the more permanent solution.

I will say this, over the last few months, my waking life has greatly suffered.  It doesn't matter if I sleep for 2 hours or 10, I wake up feeling like shit either way.  The day time sleepiness has greatly affected my career as of late as well.  I am having a hard time staying awake at the key board and also during meetings.

I sincerely hope they decide to move along with treatment very shortly, I could use some energy to get shit done.  Now, fittingly, I am going to take a nap on the couch and hope I have energy to do something later.

This is the worst time of it.  I am on the road again.  I am in Oak Park, IL, southwest of Chicago proper.  The hotel is nice enough, clean, friendly, seemingly sterile.  With that sterility comes a stark sense of being alone.  I am not some needy, sad sac that needs someone around all the time, however, I am never more aware of how alone I am in this world until I stay in a hotel room.  Here I am completely anonymous, a non-entity, utterly non-existant.

Why the fuck do I feel like this?  The later it gets, the worse it gets.  The sidewalks roll up, there is not a sound to be heard, all of life has turned in for the evening save for me.  Like one of those episodes of a bad sci fi TV show in which the hero is sent to an alternative universe where they are the only living person on the earth, yeah that's me right now.

I guess I chose to write about this tonight because I am escpecially down.  Some friends I made here were supposed to go with me to a jazz club tonight.  They stood me up, which pretty much sucks.  I would go alone, but the place is in the middle of downtown and I don't know my way around well enough not to feel completely lost.

I am also in a real funk about some recent events that I can't really talk about in the open, but I am super bummed.  It is my sincerest wish to go out and have fun and meet new people, but I think I am getting in my own way right now.  Mentally, parts of my past are holding me back, undercutting, not allowing me the confidence that I need to move on.  Every time I seem to get my feet under me, SMACK, out they go with some change or new development.  Normally I am a pretty dynamic person, able to roll with the punches and take it on the chin like a champ.  When emotions are involved, everything is out the window.  I cannot seem to get enough momentum to get over this hill of feeling fucking rotten about parts of my life.

I would like nothing more than to join some fellow human beings in some social pursuit this evening.  Have an intellegent conversation about something meaningful and yet not get overly serious?  Spill the contens of my soul to them in the hopes that they would understand whats going on in my life and not be too quick to judge.  I would like all that and more.

But no.  I am in a hotel, my soul being slowly chewed on by a maroon and gold bed spread that is as comfortable as burlap underwear.  I can now see why men die before women, cause they want to.