Chapter 2

When you are severely obese there are things you deny.  Secondary issues that you know are a direct result of your condition yet do not seem to really be an issue on their own.  Aches, pains, sore joints etc.  When my foot healed (no pun intended) I was going to have to be fitted for orthotics for my shoes.  Oh yeah nothing like having your new orthotics change your shoe size from fourteen to fifteen-four E.  The unicorn of shoe sizes.  There will be more on shoes later.  The foot thing is not over.

One of the first issues my doctor and I tackled was Sleep Apnea.  This was something that I was sure I had had for years but choose to deny the symptoms or issues related to this condition.  Surely my ego was in the way of any progress here.  My wife had been telling me all about my "weird breathing" and the lack there of in entirety for years.  It's true, often times I would "wake up" completely unrested.  I would fall asleep all the time, anywhere, anytime.  There were the other fun things no one likes to talk about.  Pissing the bed from time to time.  Seems when you are literally passing out multiple times an hour you literally lose any control of your bodily functions. I had all these things, yet didn't want to admit it.  

First thing ordered after a myriad of blood-work, sleep study.  I was devastated, sleep was the one thing I thought I could do just like anyone else.  Now that too was going to be fucked with.  

It came as absolutely NO surprise when the results of the sleep study came back.  I had severe Sleep Apnea, SEVERE!  I was averaging around sixty-eight disruptions an hour.  That's right, I'm aware that is more than one disruption a second.  So if you average zero minutes of sleep per hour, times six to eight hours a night, you average ZERO minutes of rest a night!

What did come as total shock was how incredible I felt after just waking up from the sleep study!  I have never done cocaine hopefully never will but I equated the burst of energy I had cursing through me with the similar experiences relayed by someone on coke.

On the list of world's greatest bullheaded people my late father's name is somewhere amongst the top ten.  Just below him is me.  The damage I probably did to myself and the utter denial and stupidity and complete lack of respect I had for the warning signs were all completely eclipsed by how great I felt coming off the night of the sleep study.  I could not believe it would take almost two weeks of paperwork and insurance horse shit to get my own machine.

Ego be damned, I was now masking up for bed and loving every second of it! 

Miked

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