Philips Respironics for Sleep Apnea

About a month ago, I wrote about Jesse having to get an AutoPAP for his sleep apnea. I was worried that the machine noise would keep me awake at night, and I would never get a good night’s sleep again. I’m so glad I was wrong about that… I love the machine now!

AutoPap

Not only does he sleep much better, but he sleeps so soundly that he never wakes me up anymore. I was not realizing how much his non-sleeping was affecting my sleep quality and quantity. He coughs less, and when he does cough it’s quieter with the mask over his mouth. He also used to move around a lot in his sleep and now he is perfectly still. I’m never woken up in the night anymore, and I am able to sleep in longer in the mornings!

If you’re interested, you can find more information on this machine here.

Nurse Training

Today was Jesse’s pre-op appointment for his sinus surgery next week. We had to leave pretty early, when it was still freezing outside. Just in case you need proof of how cold it was… Jesse even had to scrape the ice off the windshield.

Ice on car

I find it very strange that pre-op is more than a week before surgery. I still don’t really know what the point of the whole appointment was. We were there for over four hours. We didn’t get to meet the surgeon, just the resident who works with him. Then we were supposed to get to speak with the anesthesiologist, but he wasn’t there either, just another doctor who works with him. They did take blood though.

ENT office

But all was not lost. Since we were all ready at the hospital, we popped in at clinic for some quick training. Jesse has to give himself weekly injections at home. He usually does it in his leg, but it often really hurts. So whenever he has a doctor’s appointment coming up, he saves his shot to have a nurse do it in his hip/butt.

After his last clinic appointment, he said the nurse did it so awesome that I needed to learn to give the shot like she did. So we asked her to show me how to do it. Apparently there isn’t as much technique as I thought there would be. I was concerned that there would be a danger if the shot wasn’t given in the correct spot. Her words were “It’s butt… it totally doesn’t matter!”

I’m learning that being a CF wife means that I will gradually earn an honorary nursing degree. I’m already really good at accessing Jesse’s port for IV’s and such, now I can add giving shots to my skill set. I can’t wait until next week when I get to give it a try. I’m sure Jesse is just as anxious too.

Darth Vader

After completing a sleep study a couple of weeks ago, Jesse was diagnosed with a mild case of sleep apnea. As a result, I now have to sleep with Darth Vader in my bed!

AutoPap

The home health guy came yesterday to drop off the machine and do a quick demonstration of how it works. For the most part it is pretty quiet, but if he stops breathing deep enough, the pressure goes up and it makes a Darth Vader noise. I guess this is a pretty common problems for CFers (and many other people), but I am not very happy about adding another machine to our family. We hope this will help with the really bad headaches he has been having and leave him feeling more rested. He wrote about more specifics on the new machine on his blog.