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Decided to call the cardiologist nurse and clarify what I was told yesterday. Left the message at about 1:30 pm and it’s almost 7:00 pm so I’m sure i won’t get a call back today. I hate that!

I’m starting to worry about other things — the cough I always attribute to GERD — is it a congestive heart failure cough?

The good news, though, is that I haven’t felt the need to take a nap today, wasn’t sleeply in the workshop I was in this morning, so it seems the autoPAP is doing the job.

The new biPAP/auto is working — although I had trouble getting to sleep — and that is related to both the new machine and the bad nights I’ve had the last few nights — I feel better today.

What with all the controls, etc. I had to deal with last night, I forgot to set my alarm clock which wasn’t a good thing as I have some teacher training to go to this morning.

However, I woke up at 6:00 anyway, so that’s good.

Much less congested, but I am comparing the new heated humidifer to going without one — it was too much trouble to deal with using the old machine and I was never convinced that humidifer worked well. I got a little rain out (I’ll explain) at the beginning of the night, but no problems with the humidifer after that.

I’m really curious about the readings, but I guess I’m going to have to wait to get the smart card read for at least a few days.

As to the humidifer — one of the problems with using a PAP, is that it drys out the air. The solution is to use a humidifer. The first generation of humidifer were pass over and while that helped, the PAP air was still too dry. A real problem for those of us with allergies and other breathing issues. So they came out with heated humidifer’s. The problem with them is rain out — by the time the air got to the patient, condesation happened, and you would get water in your face. We call that rain out. Not enough heat, and the air is too dry. I also get one other problem with non-humidied air, I get literatly chilled. Fortunately I can grab a dog or two to warm up, but it wakes me up, again defeating the purpose of the CPAP.

Without humidification, I wake up with a headache, very congested and extremely dry. It is no fun.

I don’t feel 100% rested, and probably won’t until a few days have passed, adjusting to new equipment is always hard.

I honestly think I should call the cardiologist office tomorrow and clarify what he told me, though I might just wait until the nurse calls.

I was kind of freaked out that she didn’t call today, but then I remembered what she said — she had to call and get the procedure pre-certified before she could make an appointment.

I personally think most of what is going on with me is caused by the uncontrolled GERD, which was caused by the uncontrolled stress.

I think the cardiologist said that the borderline stress test could also be caused by the GERD … but that could be denial talking. I will say that I’m putting the borderline stress test together with the decreased ability to run my dogs. I hope I am getting 5, not 4.

Amy from Diabetes Mine came by and sent me a personal email and was a bit shocked that I was having problems. Frankly, I’m not THAT surprised. I’ve had sleep apnea for a very long time, it has been estimated that I started suffering from it after my car wreck when I was 20. Though lack of sleep seems to be one of those genenic vs environment arguments for me. I don’t think anyone in my dad’s family sleeps that well.

In fact, it was my pulmonary specialist who sent me to the first cardiologist, mainly to make sure that the sleep apnea hadn’t already caused heart damage. I’ll be frank, I’m actually relieved to be on an APAP, I haven’t been confident that the CPAP was doing the full job.

I’ve talked with a couple of close friends, and we all agree that I’m approaching this from the right angle — I told my current cardiologist that the reason I started seeing him regularly at 45, was so that we could meet in his office and discuss things in a sane rational way, rather than meeting him in an ER — and not even having a choice of cardiologist at the time — and making decisions in panic mode.

In other words, it is a lot better deal with a blockage, if I have one, while we are in his office, and not after I’ve been hauled into the ER, probably from a dog show, and have to deal with it on an emergency basis.

Anyway, diabetes isn’t the only factor in causing any complications. I’ve got environment to thank — I grew up eating and learning how to cook very fatty and salty foods. I started cooking for the family when I was in 6th grade, and I am quite sure that no more than 3 days passed without cooking something with a cream sauce in it. As I said before, my role models didn’t sleep. Especially on my father’s side of the family. When I was in college — and I still do this the last few weeks of school, I would run none stop, and then sleep for three days straight at the end of the semester.

I’ve got the sleep apnea, GERD, and morbid obesity to thank for this. It might be time for bariatric surgery, but I don’t have time to go there until Christmas 2006. Besides, it usually takes that amount of time to get the insurance on board.

The good news, is that I did 30 minutes on the treadmill tonight, straight, without a break, though I did slow down that pace, then did over 10 laps in our pool. Man, it was nice tonight.

I think the cardio vascular complications may be catching up with me.

I have been having troubles running the dogs in agility.

Today I went to the cardiologist for my annual checkup. Nuclear stress test time. I should have realized something was up when shortly after they started xrays, the nurse practioner started following me around. I was actually relieved she was collecting my medical history during the test rather than waiting after.

Oh, and you need to know about this — in the middle of the test, my phone rang and it was my pulmonary specialist. They wanted to see me at 1:00 pm. The techs said I could get there then, of course, I didn’t tell them that the pulmonary specialist is at big Baylor. We were in far north Dallas.
Oh, that the doctor wasn’t taking BCBS but I could be out of network. Oh well….

At the end of the test, the tech said that the cardiologist wanted to see me. Gee, it was just last year when I bitched about paying $345 which was 20% of the total charge and not once seeing the cardiologist, wasn’t it.

Well, he said the test was border line and he wants to check for blockages. They are supposed to call and make an appointment. At this point, I hadn’t decided if I was telling husband or not.

I got to big Baylor at about 1:20, but there was a huge line waiting for the valet — and it was going to be the fastest and actually not any more expensive way to park the car. So I got up to the office at 1:30. The even funner part is that an old friend of mine and my husband (we each met him seperately before we got married or EVEN met). I blurted out the cardiologist news without thinking — then realized I then had to tell the husband right away.

Seems that the pulmonary specialist wants me to have an autoPAP, and wanted me to have a specific brand rather than getting the old machine repaired.

We worked out a deal with the DME, I have an autoPAP now, and they are going to process the paperwork on a new smaller one as soon as it comes out, sometime in the next 90 days.

So all in all, it was good and bad.

More on the cardiovascular thing as I know.

I have been absolutely sick since my CPAP went down. I think the old one is contributing to that — right now, I have the worst allergy symthoms I’ve ever had.

I called my DME this morning and they are supposed to call back and let me know what they were going to do, hopefully giving me a loaner while mine is fixed.

I’m trying to recover from the school year, especially the last few weeks. I got extremely depressed and upset over how much material I was able to cover with my students. I was one complete unit short with one group.

Their grades were not as bad as I expected. I’m trying not to beat myself up too badly since it really wasn’t my fault, I’ve only had them since January 23.

So I’ve spent the last two days in the bathroom, but finally got that problem stabilized, severe diarreah which is scary when you are diabetic because you don’t know how much food is getting processed and how much is just getting dumped, plus the dehydration possibilities.

I’m also working on my two summer projects. I met with my partner on the district final (one didn’t show and gave one of his song and dances), and we spent an hour or so planning our approach. I’m going in one day next week and get some work started so we can make more progress when we can met next.

I also went through summer school training and I’m working on getting my lessons in the computer. A lot of the material is already in electronic format, but there is one book that I’m having to scan in lessons.

I am not sure if we’ll have copies in our classroom when we get back — long story, so I’m also going to put together my first week’s lesson on hardcopy so I can make copies.

We have 22 teaching days.

I’m looking forward to all of that.