A New Lifetime Friend

About a month or so ago I woke up one fine morning and Sharla was missing!!!!! I found her in bunking out in Keesha's room; she was escaping my snoring. Apparently, I was doing my best to peel the paint off the wall that evening. L

So, that day I called the doc and set up an appointment. When asked what the issue was, I replied: "My wife has a sleep disorder, my snoring." Well, that led to the picture I sent out last night where I slept-over at the Stormont Vail Sleep Disorder Center. Wow, you can only see a few of the wires that were hooked up to me in that pic. I'm really surprised I didn't dial up some AM radio station!!!

About 1:30 AM, the Sleep Technician (Renee) woke me up and said she had seen enough. They had recorded plenty of data to prove that I have "mild to severe" sleep apnea. So, right then and there she hooked me up to a CPAP machine. For those of you who may be as uninformed as I was, a CPAP machine continuously forces air, through a face mask, into a person thus keeping the air passages clear and working. In my case, prior to being hooked up, I was going about 20-30 seconds without breathing which would wake me and my feeble brain up so I would start breathing again.

Today, I was "given" (Not really, those dang things are expensive!!!!) my own CPAP machine to start using each night.

Move over Sharla, we've starting a three-some!! ;)

No More Glasses For Kem

I started the year off with a new experience: This past Thursday (1/3) I put my eyeballs through LASIK surgery. And, I'm happy to say, it went pretty well. Since I'm over 40 and consequently, have that same afliction of Presbyopia that all of us old-timers have, the doc set my dominant (left) eye to handle distance vision and my right eye is set for reading. As of my followup appointment on Friday, my combined vision is 20/20. Not bad eh?

The procedure was certainly an interesting experience. The entire thing, for both eyes, probably didn't take more than 15-20 minutes. I can't really describe what they did as I wasn't exactly in the position to be making outside observations. However, Sharla was allowed to watch from the observation window. Maybe she'll post an entry sometime.

Of course, there was a little pain involved. But not as much as one would fear. I think the two things that hurt the most were:

• There were several bright lights shining directly in my eye while I was being lined up.


• There was quite a bit a pressure being applied when the various contraptions were being placed on each eye.

I was offered a Valium prior to the operation and as I told the nurse about half way though the first eye: I was glad I took it!!! However, I'm really not certain if it was a light dose or a placebo.

The world was certainly a major blur for a couple of hours. However, after a bit of a nap, I was back in shape enough to watch the last 3 quarters of the Jayhawk victory in Miami. Obviously my eyes weren't quite up to snuff though as I thought I saw Mex strumming a guitar along with ZZ Top at halftime.