Guest Blogger
Just testing — I’ll be guest blogging and providing updates while Steph is in the hospital. Looks like my new laptop works just fine at Steph’s house. Woo hoo!
Additional Living Will Pointers
The Onion provides a few Living Will pointers I hadn’t thought of, but will now factor into my surgery preparation plans. Among them:
Leave at least one reasonably flattering photo for the press. This point cannot be emphasized enough.
Explain in no uncertain terms that, should you die and return as a zombie, loved ones must shoot you in the head without hesitation.
Research medical life-support technology and specify whether you’d prefer to be hooked up to a Danninger Continuous Passive Motion device, an Emerson suction unit, or a Slushee machine.
Comatose people have been shown to exhibit a brainstem-level response to music, so prepare a decade’s worth of mix tapes in advance.
One thing I’m actually doing is the last one… I’m putting together a post-recovery playlist of soothing music to listen to in the hospital on my iPod, after reading that soothing music can help relieve pain.
Bush’s Real iPod Playlist
Bloggers uncover the truth about what’s on Bush’s iPod.
Bash a Fag For Jesus
Shoot, yesterday was the National Day of Silence, and I missed blogging about it. This is a project where high school students, to protest the harrassment and bullying that gay and lesbian teenagers experience at school every day, choose to go through their day without speaking. Started in 1998, it’s swelled into a nationally recognized event.
Now, though, anti-gay Christian Terrorists are targeting the day by calling the day “Bash a Fag For Jesus” (oh, wait, I guess they’re really calling it a “Day of Truth” but my title is more accurate) where they target kids who are participating in the day by wearing T-shirts and handing out gay-bashing flyers.
Dining out For Life – Today!!
Dining Out for Life is an annual fundraising event held in 33 cities across America with all the proceeds benefiting respective HIV/AIDS organizations in their communities. On Thursday, April 14th, these fine restaurants will be contributing 25% of their food sales to The Damien Center. (The Damien Center provides and coordinates comprehensive services and education to persons living with or affected by HIV/AIDS in our community and offers free and confidential testing designed to limit the spread of HIV.)
Read on to see the list of restaurants and what meals they’re providing…
Children’s cartoon book of Hindu gods
I thought this was really cute; a picture book of Hindu gods. They even have Hanuman. Yea!
More about our shallow culture
Wow.
A researcher at the University of Alberta has shown that parents are more likely to give better care and pay closer attention to good-looking children compared to unattractive ones. Dr. Andrew Harrell presented his findings recently at the Warren E. Kalbach Population Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
Harrell’s findings are based on an observational study of children and shopping cart safety. With the approval of management at 14 different supermarkets, Harrell’s team of researchers observed parents and their two to five-year-old children for 10 minutes each, noting if the child was buckled into the grocery-cart seat, and how often the child wandered more than 10 feet away. The researchers independently graded each child on a scale of one to 10 on attractiveness.
Sleep Study Results
Sleep apnea is defined as the absence of airflow at the nose and mouth for longer than 10 seconds during sleep. Sleep apnea syndrome (SAS) is described as the occurrence of more than 30 apnea episodes over a seven-hour period of nocturnal sleep.
My doctor says I had 150 – 160 episodes during my study where I either stopped breathing or had severe shallow breathing, causing me to awaken. I also had a slight drop in oxygen levels. So my sleep apnea is classified as severe. This is causing a severe disruption in my sleep, which helps explain why I’m tired all the time, in addition to my tiredness from the heart valve problem.
Sleep Apnea Information and Resources
The solution is that I have to have a C-PAP breathing machine and mask to use at night, which I go to get set up tomorrow. I also have to lose weight, which might be the cause of the problem, or which might help contribute to other factors that are the actual cause. I’ve always have trouble with snoring and waking up, though, even back when I was thin. My roommates in college used to complain about it. So I suspect that my weight isn’t the only cause.
Interestingly, weight gain is also listed as one of the symptoms sleep apnea — meaning having apnea contributes to weight gain.
Sleep Apnea as a Cause of Obesity
Obesity and sleep apnea are a chicken and egg problem. It is not always clear which condition is responsible for the other. For example, obesity is often a risk factor and possibly a cause of sleep apnea, but it is also likely that sleep apnea increases the risk for weight gain:Some studies indicate that sleep apnea disrupts rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which, in turn, increases the risk for obesity.
Research indicates that animals deprived of REM sleep tend to eat more.
People with apnea may also become too tired to exercise and so put on weight.
He also said that I have to let the anesthesiologist know about this before surgery, so they don’t take my breathing tube out too early after surgery while I’m still under sedation, because I could get oxygen deprivation and brain damage. Which makes me remember when I was coming out of sedation after my appendectomy, and how I couldn’t breathe and the nurses kept coming over and shaking me and telling me to breathe. No wonder I’m stupid.
Truck Cover Stolen
Last night someone stole the vinyl truck bed cover from my truck where it was parked behind my house. It will be $250 to replace the cover, and I don’t know if I want to do that, considering it might just get stolen again. It’s not like when my rainbow flag was stolen over and over, and I just spent $30 and replaced the pole and flag.
Between Stephanie’s car being broken into, and my flagpole getting stolen, and now this, I need to seriously put together a financial plan for fencing around the yard and getting better security. I should have put this together a long time ago; I say this every time something happens, and then I don’t do anything about it. I need to do it not just for my sake but for Spike’s, so he can have a backyard he can run around it without being on a leash all the time. I have to get my money in order and take care of the problem.