Diary of Surrender, Week 11: I’m Sorry, But Fuck this CPAP Machine

Life is just trading one set of problems for another set of problems.

Photo by Victor on Unsplash

I’m writing a diary about my year of giving up, although I may give up on this too. Who knows? You can read about why I’m giving up here, and the previous week of saying fuck it here. (The term “week” is used loosely).

One of my problems is that I’m fundamentally a good girl who follows the rules, so when more than one person told me that I stop breathing in the middle of the night, for an alarming amount of time, I dutifully went to see a doctor for sleep apnea. Admittedly, the process took awhile — it started in 2018 with a home sleep test, and then paying $600 out-of-pocket for a mouthguard, because I couldn’t yet wrap my mind around the idea of a CPAP machine. Getting the molds for the mouthguard made me gag so severely I thought I was going to die, and then it didn’t work anyway. My cop boyfriend made this clear in his cop-like way. “Doesn’t work,” he grunted.

So it was back to the drawing board, but the process got interrupted by Mother Nature deciding to put us all in a headlock for two years. When she finally loosened her grip, I went back to a new sleep doctor, who made it clear that my only option was a CPAP machine. Of course, the other option was to do nothing about it, but that’s not how we roll these days. All problems must be fixed.

Let me pause here and say that I really, truly, made a valiant attempt to have a good attitude about this. Sure, I didn’t want to sleep with a mask on, but I had newfound commitment to health (not to being skinny, but to being healthy) and I figured that anything that could improve my sleep would be a net positive, even if I did look like a manatee wearing a scuba mask. I was worried that Fish wouldn’t want to sleep with me anymore, but the first night I strapped it on on he just stared, unblinking, for about five minutes, sniffed me, decided I was the same person and then curled up next to me anyway. So I was optimistic.

Mostly, I was excited to not be so tired all the time, because I am fucking exhausted. All the time. I have hypothyroidism, so I like to blame my exhaustion on that, but my endocrinologist dismisses that idea. “You’re hormone levels are…