Sleepless in Chesapeake

The crescendo of last nights CPAP experience was not only removing the mask from my face but pulling the power plug from the back of the machine to make sure whomever was trying to suffocate me couldn’t.

It started out well enough, the usual tossing to get comfortable exasperated by the straps and hose, but soon I was asleep. Ever since my visit to the sleep specialist last week, the new pressure setting has been easier to manage but last night was different. I woke up shortly after falling asleep to the sound of air escaping from my mouth. It is kind of humorous how my brain will try and make sense of the sensation, usually changing my dreams to involve breathing or telling someone to shush……..

Apparently the air had been leaking for a while because my mouth was extremely dry. The only thing I can do when this happens in to take some two inch medical tape and literally seal my mouth shut. The goal is to eliminate any ability to breath in or out of my mouth. Good times. To experience this for yourself, cover your mouth with your hand and stick your head out the car window while driving and breath through your nose. The panic and low level lizard brain response to cutting off my secondary airway takes every bit of my higher brain function to override.

The Amygdala or lizard brain will always win the battle for self preservation and last night was no exception. Not sure if I can blame everything on the little guy, but it seems whenever my mouth is tapped shut I have this irresistible urge to cough, my nose gets plugged, I can’t catch my breath, and I have an irresistible urge to eat flies. Just kidding about the flies. Ever tried coughing with your mouth taped shut? Good times. After the panic of the coughing spell passed I drifted off to sleep until waking abruptly to the realization that I was suffocating.

There are many ways to die and I have considered most of them over the 41 years on the planet. There is one thing I know for certain about life, it will find a way to kill you, but suffocating has to be the worst. There is simply too much time to become fully aware of what is happening to your body for my taste. I don’t like suffocating and my lizard brain is really afraid of it because it convinces me every night that I am going to die with tape on my mouth and forced air down my nose.

I don’t understand how it could arrive at the conclusion the outcome of CPAP pressure and tape is harmfull. There is no evolutionary path of failure in my family tree for a mouth taped shut while breathing pressurized air. In any case, I doubt there could ever be  a negative natural selection outcome in the first place since suffocation is generally lethal but that is a topic for another day. Whatever the reason for the conclusion that tape and pressure equals death matters very little at the end of the night when faced with the looming reality of it. The fact is whatever my lizard brain has figured out how to do to make me remove the mask so as not to prove its theory is working.

The most troubling thing about it all is that not only has the fear response been activated but my imagination is also along for the ride. I was convinced last night that in order to preserve my life I needed to unplug the machine. Not from the wall, but from the back of the unit so that the people trying to “kill me” could not figure out how to reactivate it once I feel asleep again. I was certain of this, as certain as I am that I am late for lunch.

A therapist once told me I should write horror books about my experiences in the middle of the night.

I no longer visit him.

Perhaps he is trying to kill me…..