• Alternative Uses for CPAP
• A funny thing happened on the way to sleep
• Bodyguards - posted by Charles

Alternative Uses for CPAP

• Drying paint
• Getting dust bunnies out from under the bed
• Tickling his/her fancy
• cooling off hot flashes!
• Cat can spend hours chasing invisible mouse escaping from end of hose. :-)
• I can play **Jet pilot** over Korea:
  Put on the "oxygen" BiPap Mask
  Yell "Tango Tango, we have bogies twelve o'clock high!!"
  "Drop wing tanks!"
  "Wingman!!"
  "Dive, dive, we're going in hot and heavy!!"
• Playing Star Wars: "Shhhh... Luke, I'm your father... Shhhhh...Feel the power of the dark side... Shhhh..."
• Creating Fake Snow - "Now... If I put Styrofoam packing chips in this end of the hose, then flip this switch......"
• Unblockign Drains
• Pumping up flat tires and air beds
• Create a LOT of bubbles in the fish tank
• Put the machine in the keg, plug it in ..... BEER MASK!
• Put on your Mask and ... you can laugh and never have to worry about milk coming out of your nose when watching Robin Williams...
• Musical Instrument
  • Collect all the wine bottles left from Thanksgiving dinner, and fill with different amounts of wine or water.
  • Line up the all our cpap machines and blow across the tops to create different musical tones. We could be called the "Respironics Symmphonics" or the "Remstar All Stars. We could play:
    • Stranger in the night
    • Mr Sandman
    • I could have slept all night
    • How about Stella by starlight
    • In the still of the nigh
    • When the deep purple falls
    • Beneath the Southren Cross

"A funny thing happened on the way to sleep..."
A short true story by Scott P. Morin (C) 2002

The power went off here a few weeks ago at 11pm just as I was putting my CPAP mask on, all nice and sleepy. I laid there quietly for a minute or two. No power. SH*T! I screamed (don't like my sleep messed with...took me two years to "accept" my CPAP machine and we are now one in the night).

So I get up and stumble around for a flashlight (took .25mg of Halcion about 45 minutes before...so I'm feeling good, sleepy, groggy and disoriented (been taking it every night for the past 14 years - ALWAYS
have had trouble falling asleep even before my Sleep Apnea began in '96).

I find my flashlight. So now I'm standing in the middle of my bedroom at 11:05pm on a Wednesday night thinking, okay, now what?

My first thought is that maybe it's just my power off and I was going to go to the basement to check out the breaker panel. I throw on a t-shirt, sweatpants and slippers and start downstairs. As I enter my kitchen, I look outside...some lights are on, others off.

Feeling more confused, I grab my jacket (flashlight still guiding me) and open my front door. SH*T!! I screamed again as my house alarm squeals three feet above my head. I can't get my CPAP to work, but the alarm system is working just fine.

Adrenaline starts pumping. Hands start shaking. I drop the flashlight. I try to put in the code quickly to stop the noise...I enter it in wrong. Then I enter it in wrong again, and again. I stop for a minute and put my hands over my ears. Take a few deep breaths (something I do better awake than asleep... LOL) and enter the code correctly. The loud siren is replaced by a quick two beeps and then silence. My ears are ringing ::Sigh:: It's going to be one of those nights.

I pick up my flashlight (it's shining a little dimmer than before the four foot drop to the hardwood floor). I go back to the kitchen, pick up the phone and call the alarm company to give them my code word so the police won't come. The alarm panel keeps beeping at me. Beep, beep. Beep, beep. The woman on the phone tells me what to press to make the "Power Outage" message and the beep, beep go away. I thank
her and hang up the phone.

I'm standing in my kitchen. I look at my cell phone on the counter; the time is now 11:20pm. I go back to the front door and step out into the cold clear night. It is one of those beautiful crisp nights where you can see the stars so clearly. I can hear sirens in the distance. Police at first. A few minutes pass and then a fire engine...another fire engine...another police car...and then an Ambulance. I'm looking at the condos to the left and right of me.All the ones to the right of me are dark...all the ones to the left ofme are lit. Then the rest of the condos go dark. Five seconds later,the street lights. Five seconds after that, every light in every house and on every street goes dark. One, two, three. All dark.

I stand in the middle of the parking lot looking up at the big moon, the only light that didn't go out. I stand there staring up at it for what seemed like only a few minutes. The hazy cloud of Halcion was working its way back into my brain and my muscles as the adrenaline slowly leaves. I suddenly am very tired. I know I can't sleep, the APNEA won't let me. I'm very cold and I decide to go back in. Just as I step into the front door, more police sirens whale in the distance. I close the door and start to enter the alarm code (force of habit) and catch myself before entering in the fourth digit. Don't want to go through that again.

I walk into the kitchen and pick up the phone. Time to report the power outage. They tell me that there has been a car accident and a large portion of my town is now in the dark. I ask, "How long with the power..." She cuts me off and says there is no way of telling until the repair crews get on the scene but that it could be a few hours. She tells me to go to sleep and hangs up the phone. I stood in my darkened kitchen illuminated only by a fading flashlight and started to laugh. Just a little at first...then a full fledged belly laugh. Tears of laughter and crying came from my eyes. I just wanted to go to sleep.

I picked up my cell phone again and saw the time was now 12:15am. Can't believe I was outside so long. My brain clears up for a minute...long enough for me to realize if I don't find some fresh batteries for my flashlight, I would be laughing in the dark.

I take my flashlight and rummage through the whole house. Kitchen drawers, linen closets, bathroom cupboards, nightstands. I find 9 volt batteries, brand new. I find AA batteries, brand new. I find AAA batteries, brand new. I find C batteries, brand new. Know what kind of batteries my flashlight takes? Yup. D. Don't seem to have any of those. I'll gladly pay you tomorrow for two D batteries today. This strikes me funny and I laugh again...not as hard as before...very tired now.

With the last bit of light I have, I search for and find my lighter and about ten Yankee Candles. A wide variety of fruity smells. I had Watermelon and Key Lime Pie burning in the bedroom, Apple Spice in the den, Strawberry and Blueberry in the Kitchen and Macintosh and Fresh Peach in the Living room. I click off the flashlight. It did well for one night. Being so groggy, I walk through the whole house one more time to make sure all of the candles are safe and not near anything that could catch fire. I go back downstairs and plop into the big recliner in living room. The once mighty flashlight now rests in my hands. I put my head back and start rocking. I am trying to stay awake (I really hate that whole waking up gasping for breath thing).

It feels really late. I am staring at the Fresh Peach candle burning on my coffee table. I start thinking about why they call it a coffee table. Well I know why THEY do, people rest coffee cups on it...I don't drink coffee. I like soda, water, juice... I'm getting very sleepy. The rocking is slowing down to the point of barely moving.

ALL OF A SUDDEN I JUMP!! I must have dozed off. The power is back on. The answering machine is clicking and beeping. The old laserdisc player turns on and starts playing the last movie I watched on it and forgot to take out. Lights are coming on.

I sit there for another minute. Just staring at all of these electronic gadgets coming to life, resetting themselves and going back to sleep. Sleep.

I get up. Turn off the laserdisc player. Blow out all the candles. Reset the alarm. Put my cell phone back into its charger. Wow. It's 1:42am. Brain is all foggy with Halcion and I find myself stumbling more than walking.

I make it upstairs to my bedroom where this whole adventure began. I reset my alarm clock and turn off the lights. The CPAP machine is blowing air at a pressure of 11 through the nasal pillows. It sounds so loud when I'm not wearing it. I undress and climb back into bed. I reach over, grab my mask and put it on my head. As I start to fall asleep feeling the wonderful air pressure that will keep me breathing and sleeping soundly throughout the night, I quietly say to myself, "Let's try this one more time."

Good night.

Bodyguards - posted by Charles

The tech that set up my CPAP left the house around three in the afternoon. So I figured I would fire up the machine for an afternoon nap. I put out the lights, drew the curtains, put on the mask, started the machine and kicked back. I was just drowsing off when WHAP! something hit the tubing, hard. I looked up just in time to see Tiny, my cat, reared up with her paw raised way up behind her ear preparing to strike the death blow at this hissing serpentine monster that had me by the throat. I didn't dare laugh because she was so serious. She was not playing, she was enraged. She looked like one of those angry Chinese dragons, I expected to see flames coming out of her nose. I quickly turned off the machine, unhooked the hose and let her look at it. She crept up on it carefully, sniffed it a few times and took a couple of nibbles at it to see what it tasted like and backed off. But she was totally suspicious and wouldn't leave the room. She just backed off to the corner of the bed and looked daggers at the hose.

Later that night, when I was sleeping with the machine on, I was awakened twice by Tiny and Marco, Tiny's male bodyguard, who had come in to see how I was doing. They came up softly, trying not to wake me up (I woke up anyway) and inspected my face carefully to make sure it was me, then they went over the mask inch by inch, followed the hose back to the machine and gave that a total once over, sniffing. Then they proceeded to the foot of the bed and just lay there watching the machine. They were acting so concerned and protective I expected them to take my pulse.

I hope that this machine makes me sleep better. But I will definitely sleep better knowing that, thanks to my six pound protector, Tiny, I will never have to worry about being attacked by snakes while I'm asleep.