Sleepless in St. Louis: Diagnosis Apnea

It’s official. My husband has sleep apnea.

I have known this for at least seven years. Now he believes it too. Why? After a sleep study during which he stopped breathing more than 100 times per hour, the doctor told him oh yes, he has a most severe case.

Repeat the rule after me. Listen to your spouse. Listen to your spouse.

My husband insisted for much of the past seven years he didn’t need to go to the doctor. His condition was genetic. He couldn’t help it. He was born this way. Comes from a long line of short, fat, snoring, German men.

All this despite the fact he stands six feet tall and his father is taller. So much for the short, fat, German man defense.

But my father-in-law snores too. I acquiesced to the genetic excuse for a while.

Then I got mad. A counselor friend tells me it’s easier to be angry than to be afraid. She’s on to something.

I was afraid. I am afraid my husband will drop dead of a condition that is absolutely treatable.

In the middle of the night, he will have a stroke or a heart attack and be gone. Or in a state of cataclysmic sleep deprivation, he will fall asleep at the wheel and die in a crash. It happens. Poof! Just like that. Gone.

You can’t hide tired forever. Eventually chronic sleep deprivation shows.

My husband, once unable to stop talking, now was unable to carry on a conversation. The man who once relished reading with his little boy now was unable to stay awake past the first few pages.

We were losing him even though he was still living here with us.

At that point I was terrified, so I got hopping mad.

And that is where I camped out for a while. Seething in my anger. All by myself in my hopping mad little tent. Alone.

That is also where my lesson comes in.

No more seething alone. I need to say what I need to say before the quiet repression begins and the situation balloons into a major crisis. Cue John Mayer.

skinnylittlefootsml — my skinny little foot in Kenneth Cole

When I finally put my skinny little foot down and called the sleep clinic and drove him to the appointment, my husband got the diagnosis I expected.

His doctor prescribed a sleep machine. It is helping. Immensely. Miraculously.

Of course the only model that works for my him is the most complicated and expensive one.

Funny thing. He didn’t use that as an excuse to bail.

This time I wasn’t going to let him. After all these years, every day and night, we’re still learning our lessons.

Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Ephesians 4:2 TLB

In his book Questions & Answers About Sleep Apnea, Dr. Sudhansu Chokroverty, MD, FRCP, FACP, reports 15-20 million people in the United States suffer from sleep apnea. Want more information? Mayo Clinic, The National Institutes of Health, and The New York Times are excellent places to start online. My husband will even email with you about his experience if you like. Contact everyday epistle at att dot net. And please consult your doctor.

Dear Nora Ephron, thank you for Sleepless in Seattle. Who’d have guessed your film along with Pearl Jam and Nirvana would lure masses of Gen-Xers to Seattle in the early 90s. They stayed for Starbucks and ended up with Twilight vampire children who settled across the way in Forks. (Did I just write that? I think I need to get some sleep.)

Posted on May 2, 2011July 9, 2012 by Aimee 9

Momma Bear Speaks

Saw a personal friend during spring break who is an FBI agent. On January 12, 2007, he was first on the scene to discover Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby alive in the apartment of their kidnapper in Kirkwood, Missouri.

Those boys came back from the dead. Shawn had been missing for more than four years. Ben for four days.

St. Louis cheered and cried at their rescue. We remembered when they were taken. Now they were coming home. Amazing, tragic, triumphant resurrection.

My response to their kidnapper was immediate: If he were to as much as breathe on my child, I would rip his throat out with my own two hands.

I’m a Christian, and I can assure you that is not a suggested Christian response.

I knew it when I thought it. Didn’t care. I was overcome then and still quite sure now I could succeed in killing any predator of my child.

I get angry sometimes. I have raised my voice. Even pounded my tiny fist against the wall. But cold-blooded murder? Vigilante justice? Not my thing.

This was different. A more powerful manifestation of the guttural pang of ferocity I felt the first time I sensed my child was being hurt.

I don’t recall the exact incident, but I can guarantee his life was not in danger. And it was very early on.

Probably a tiff at moms-day-out over a toy. Or a rejection by another one-year-old, if that is even possible. Maybe a thoughtless comment from an adult.

Before that, during my pregnancy when the news reported a child being hurt or going missing, a drumbeat thumped inside my heart as the feet of my child tapped inside my belly.

Protect, protect, protect. What is wrong with us? Grrr…

This usually ended in a heap of hormonal tears and a boycott of the news. Like the first anniversay of the disappearance of Christian Ferguson, who is still missing. I just could not watch the coverage. If I didn’t look, maybe this news would go away.

The day of Shawn and Ben’s redemption, my instinct was full blown. An overpowering urge to lunge. Claw. Bite. Tear from limb to limb.

I had become Momma Bear.

Momma Bear is not a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff like Winnie the Pooh. No, Momma Bear is a living, breathing, killing machine whose primal purpose is to preserve the life of her offspring.

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a hundred times. Bet you have too.

From good women on Facebook or in grocery store lines. Upstanding women on the playground. Christian women in schools, hosptials, and churches. Young mothers, old ladies, even women who do not have children of their own.

Listen to us growl: It’s one thing to mess with me. But do not hurt the child.

Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless. Psalm 10:12 NIV

An estimated 800,000 children are reported missing each year—more than 2,000 children every day. An estimated one in five girls and one in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before age 18. Yet, only one in three will tell anyone. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

Posted on April 20, 2011August 8, 2012 by Aimee 13

Mortality Math and Neon Numbers

“Your mom lived a long time,” said my six-year-old over Cheerios at breakfast, “and then she died.”

“Yes, she lived a long time and then she died,” I said. “She lived until she was…”

Uh, oh. I didn’t want to go there. “Until she was old,” I said.

“How old was she?” he said.

Little kids are so smart. I was caught and had to answer him.

“She died when she was 45.”

“She was young when she died,” he said. Smart, and can do the math.

“Yes,” I said. “She was young. But your great-grandmother lived to be 83.”

This launched a series of fish stories, my husband and I recounting all our relatives who died in their 80s, 90s, virtually any age older than 45.

My son knows I’m 40. He announced it to anyone who would listen the night of my birthday at The Cheesecake Factory. And he knows 40 is only five less than 45. Like I said he can do the math.

I can do the math too. Given those numbers, I have less than five years to go.

My math is more advanced than my son’s. What he doesn’t know is my maternal grandfather died at 50. Looking at this pattern of 50 then 45, what comes next?

I used to figure 40, but so far I’m still alive. My new guess is 42 1/2. Time is running out.

My husband thinks I’m mad when I start this. He was there when my mother was diagnosed with cancer, when she died 10 months later, when we buried her. He gets my grief. The death wish however throws him for a loop.

“I do not want to die in Missouri,” I said upon returning from spring break. Missouri is pronounced misery when I’m particularly homesick.

“I want to die in North Carolina. We can stay here for now, but as soon as I am diagnosed with a terminal illness, I am moving with or without you.”

Or how about this one? “If something were to happen to me, I want you to print out my blog posts and save them for when our son is older.”

My husband stares at me perplexed, troubled, gently shaking his head. We’ve been down this road before.

“You’re not your mother,” he says. “You’re not going to die when you’re 45.”

“How do you know?” I might be 42 1/2. “You don’t understand.”

Hope Edelman understands. She was only 17 when her mom died.

In her book “Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss,” Edelman calls it Mortality Math 101. It’s the calculation “in which a mother’s age at death is a fixed value, and the only distance worth measuring is the one between here and there (1994, p. 222).”

I don’t want to die at 45 or anytime between now and then or for many years after. But I don’t know. None of us do.

My mom’s death strips me of the illusion that it can’t happen. Leaves me exposed as I slowly inch toward the “neon number,” a phrase from Edelman’s 2007 book “Motherless Mothers: How Mother Loss Shapes the Parents We Become.”

45-45-45. It blinks and stutters, glaring up ahead in the dark.

I can ignore it. Pretend I don’t see it. Lie and tell my son 45 is really quite old.

Or I can set my face like flint toward it, look it in the eye, and pray to live.

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?” 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 NIV

Diamond Rio, One More Day.

Posted on April 6, 2011July 14, 2012 by Aimee 14

Men and Women and the Curse of the Want

During spring break we stayed a night with dear friends. Their eldest Eliza, nearly four, was thrilled to have our Theo, age six, as a play date.

Theo was thrilled to have Eliza’s massive wooden train set and open family room where he, my husband and Eliza’s dad could build the mother of all tracks.

Eliza played trains too, for about three minutes. Then the wooing began.

“Feo,” she said. Most preschoolers cannot yet pronounce the th sound, so they replace it with the f sound.

“Feo, let’s play veterinarian.”

Feo did not answer. He was busy fashioning a railroad crossing.

Eliza was undeterred. She stood near the stuffed animals calling. “Feo. Feo? Play veterinarian with me.”

Still no answer. She tried another approach.

Lodging herself in her younger sibling’s walker, she pretended to be stuck.

“Feo, help! Feo, help me get out! Feo! FEO!” Ah, the damsel in distress.

Feo, now engrossed in bridge building, could not be bothered.

Eliza’s mom chimed in. “Eliza,” she said. “You can get yourself out.”

“Feo, help me!” said Eliza.

“Theo, Eliza needs you,” I said. “Will you help her get out of the walker, please?”

My little prince obeyed his queen mum, dutifully leaving his venture to assist. Once Eliza was freed from peril, he marched back to resume construction.

Eliza did not give up. “Feo,” she said. “Feo, let’s play dolls now. Feo?”

Silence down the line, except for the muffled clinking of wooden tracks fitted together over carpet on the trek to the other side of the family room.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Eliza grabbed none other than Cinderella. She shoved the doll right between Theo’s eyes and said, “Feo! Cinderella needs to tell you something!”

Her mother and I shook our heads, both understanding all too clearly the plight of this little princess.

“She’s sooo relational,” said her mother. Aren’t we all, ladies?

In Genesis God lays out the consequences for Adam and Eve’s willful disobedience. The overarching consequence is death, but there is other fallout.

For example, right after God tells Eve she will have pain in childbirth, He says she will want for her husband and he will rule over her. The usual interpretation I’ve heard umpteen times in church is that women will want to dominate men, while God requires men to lead.

I get that. But I wonder. Maybe the woman’s want for the man is really a want for the man. Not to lord over him, but to relate to him.

It’s my gorgeous friend describing how she undressed and danced in front of the TV, unsuccessful in her attempt to tear her husband away from the football game.

It’s Scarlett realizing her love for Rhett in Gone With the Wind when he slams the door in her face. (Correction: Rhett walks out the open door and disappears into the foggy night. It’s a slam all the same.)

It’s Eliza’s unrelenting calls to Feo.

Men, pay attention. This one’s free. Throw your woman a bone of interaction and you’ll chip away at the curse in your house.

Give her your undivided attention as you would a dearly loved treasure, and watch the curse shatter like glass on the tracks of a mighty engine.

Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. Genesis 3:16 NIV

Sanctus Real’s powerful song Lead Me is not to be missed. Click here to listen.

Posted on March 30, 2011July 14, 2012 by Aimee 14

All I Really Need to Know About Terrorism I Learned in Kindergarten

Try explaining terrorism to a six-year-old.

The topic comes up occasionally with my son. He knows some bad men flew planes into buildings and the buildings fell down killings lots of people.

He asks me if the men who did this went to jail. No, I say. They died when they crashed the planes.

He wants to see the octagon in Washington, D.C. Likes to watch the news. Sees how the people in Cairo stood up to a dictator.

I tell him how blessed we are to live in America where we can think, speak and worship as we see fit. I tell him religious freedom is why the pilgrims came to America in the first place.

I tell him how in some countries people can be thrown in jail or even killed for disagreeing with their governments or believing in Christ. How the men who crashed the planes wanted to kill Americans.

People like them who try to scare and hurt us, they are the terrorists.

My kindergartner has some suggestions.

“Let’s put up signs everywhere that say ‘NO TERRORISTS ALLOWED,’ and tell the soldiers to shoot the terrorists if they see them.”

I like it. When can we get started?

He designs a crab pit to trap the terrorists. “They would be eaten by the crabs?”

“No,” he says. “The crabs would pinch them.”

I doubt pinching by crabs will withstand the Third and Fourth Geneva Convention rules against torture, but I’m not telling him that.

Then there are the war games. To a little boy, every stick is a weapon and every bad guy is a target.

He loves soldiers, tanks, fighter jets and aircraft carriers. He wants to be a warrior, a knight and a jedi. Wants to save the puppies, the kittens, the wild animals, the babies and the people.

That, my friends, is the American way.

Call it hawkish if you want. Call it naïve.

But there is nothing wrong with being the good guys.

Nothing wrong with standing for freedom and protecting the weak. Nothing wrong with knocking the daylights out of evil and terror.

In the words of former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), being lucky can’t be our national security strategy.

You who love the LORD, hate evil! He protects the lives of His godly people and rescues them from the power of the wicked. Psalm 97:10 NLT

This post is dedicated to all those who work to protect our country.

Thanks to Robert Fulghum. His New York Times bestseller All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten gave me the idea for title.

Posted on March 8, 2011July 14, 2012 by Aimee 12

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