Emboldened by my moderately successful drive to the nutritionist, I decided I could drive myself to the sleep doctor’s office on Monday, which is only a little bit farther away. I was there for the hundredth time to fit my oral appliance for sleep apnea. It has now been a year-long debacle and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to find a completely different brand and a completely different dentist and start over. That also means it will cost me $850+ instead of the $0 that the current device was going to be because the clinic wrote off the cost to me after the first three mess-ups.

I brought a thank you card and some fancy chocolate to the orthodontist because, the last time she saw me, I was literally being carried out of the office by my husband, unable to speak and having a total body meltdown, after being there 2.5 hours. It was mortifying, and she’s always been considerate of my illness and empathetic, so I wanted to thank her for following through. She burst into tears. And I mean burst. She didn’t just tear up, she started crying so hard, she couldn’t speak. That made me wish I’d given her a far nicer gift. She said (when she regained composure) that it meant so much and she knew how hard it had been on me and I’d stayed nice throughout the process… It’s true, I did stay nice because I love my sleep doctor and, really, it’s a bad product, not a bad clinic, but they wrote off the cost because I made it clear to the clinic manager that that was the appropriate thing to do. I also made it clear, in writing, that the problem was not with me and had nothing to do with my illness or my anatomy. And I’ve started the conversation about getting help with the preauthorisation for some different type of device from a different clinic. I don’t think it’ll work, but I’m politely yet firmly letting them know that this was their problem and I shouldn’t have to pay full price for another mold to be made. But let the orthodontist think I am all peaches and cream. 🙂

Anyway, on Monday I was going back for a final fitting and it was 1.5 hours again of putting the thing in my mouth, grinding down the pressure points, spraying awful green chemical crap in the mouth piece, putting it in, clenching my jaw, pointing out where it’s hitting my teeth… on and on, over and over… That process takes so much out of me and hurts my neck and my jaw and rips up my lips. Plus, I had a horrible hypoglycemic episode and had to eat red dye #2 glucose tablets. Ugh.

When we were done, I couldn’t drive home – the world was spinning and my ears were screaming and my vision was blurry. I called my husband for rescue. He and his friend that he works with came to collect me and the car, god love them. I lay down on the concrete slab outside the clinic to rest while I waited. A 40-year old kicked back on the concrete in front of a sleep clinic in a sort of urban strip mall didn’t seem quite as acceptable as a similar sight when I was 20, lying on the concrete steps of a university building, writing poetry, feeling beatnik. But, oh well. I’ve laid down on restaurant floors and airplane aisles; I have no more qualms.

The sunny silver lining was: it was summer that day. One day of crazy heat. I took off my big duffle coat and then my sweatshirt and then my scarf and then my long-sleeved shirt and, by the time my husband arrived, I was in a tank top, baking myself, in deep meditation.

The other great things from this week:
A long visit with Z. and sweet baby Aja (who is not such a baby anymore!).

And I made it to the cemetery on my mobility scooter for a 40-minute “walk”, with beautiful spring coming to life everywhere I looked.