Nothing will make you more of a believer in God than this disease. I've awakened on several occasions during the night crying out in a loud voice " help me Jesus!!! " knowing that I was on my last breath. It literally feels as if you are going to die, hopefully you come out of it and realize that your just having an episode, but they all feel as if its your last day on earth.
I have been helped only by making adjustments to the machine. Over the course of some 2 years of fooling around with this, on a trial and error basis, I finally one day realized that my disturbances, despite having the machine at my disposal, was due to a lack of air pressure. One night I said to myself, I'm going to try to ramp this thing up, way up, and after about 2 literal years of hell, I finally hit paydirt. The pressure which the doctors had set was at a point that was too low for me to gain any benefit from, whatsoever. After becoming accustomed to the severe changes in air pressure increase, I was able to acquire sleep for the first time in years.
Mentioned earlier was a dear neighbor who lives directly next door to me who I was forced to have to talk to one morning, while trying not to be rude I listened to her complaints about the squirells that are a problem for us as they have made a home in some of the deteriorating portions of our adjoining homes, you know how standoffish we are as a people, even if we are no longer witnesses, an unfortunate aspect of our conditioning, to make an even longer story hopefully less long, she mentioned how she couldn't hear any thing anyway as a result of the noise from her air-conditioner which remains running on a constant basis during the summer, and her CPAP machine, and then came the moment of clarity, we now have something in common that I can talk about regarding our similar situations.
We talked for about an hour about various things after that and in spite of 10 years being next door neighbors and having nothing more than hi's and how do you do's to say to each other, that connection was my baptism into the wonderful world of strangers and worldly people who truly have your best interest at heart.
I have no health insurance and you just can't get replacement parts for medical equipment without a doctors approval, or a prescription and they can't be bought over the counter as you do an alternator for a automobile.
As I had come downstairs that morning to try and see if there might be some way I could rig up my mask and head gear that was dissasterously well worn, for whatever reason, I ventured outside and there was my neighbor who for whatever odd reason wanted to hold conversation about things that I was truly just not interested in at time. I listened, however, and in time we connected. This true neighbor, as Christ had described in the parable of the Good Samaritan, assured that I was to get a mask through her health coverage as she has congestive heart failure that can result in her death without the benefit of the CPAP she uses.
Though I took her words for mere smoke signals at first, a little over a month into our chance encounter, she had her daughter knock on my door, and I was completely blown away when she presented me with the mask and headgear that seemed to be custom fit for me. I've gotten the best sleep in years over the past 6 months due to these things that have taken place. Forgive please the length of this, but it was a shining moment in my life that I can only attribute to ever endearing grace of God.
Thanx 4 Hearing a Portion of My Story.
