So why is it when we face a new experience that our brain always goes to the worst or most extreme scenario?
I’ve been told by some of my family and those special friends – the ones who are prepared to risk it all to tell you something about yourself, that not only do I snore, but that I go through a series of events when I actually stop breathing when I’m asleep. Of course I know nothing personally about this as I am asleep!! Doh!! But eventually events brought me to the place where I admitted that it could create a problem so I promised to talk to my Dr about it.
He asked me a set series of questions and the results were 14/24. I didn’t think that was too bad, but he said he’d send them off to the hospital for them to be the judge as to whether we should proceed further or just accept things as they were.
A few weeks later I received a letter from the hospital to attend an appointment at the Sleep Clinic and the thoughts of what comes next started to creep in. Of course, I thought the worst. No matter what was said to assure me, I had much greater thoughts than was being told.
I imagined that I would be put on this machine that had a big gas cylinder attached and 2″ diameter hoses going from there to a ‘gas’ mask of the magnitude that you saw them using in the war (complete with those goggle eyed bits).
I went on the appointment earlier this week and the nurse assured me that there are several types of masks available these days, some with little nose clips similar to those the synchronised swimmers use in the Olympics, etc. Nothing was said about the actual machine, so I was still left thinking about this big gas cylinder (I hadn’t even thought about the little round ones that are used for bbq’s). I suppose it didn’t help that my Dad had been an engineer so we used to have one of those cylinders in his workshop, which probably gave me the visual picture in the first place.
Anyway I was talking with a friend who uses one of these machines, and shared my fears with her. How was I going to go away anywhere if I had to take all this equipment? What does she do? Well then I got put into the REAL picture. No gas bottles! No 2″ hoses!
Apparently it’s a little machine about the size of a bedside clock/radio which has little tubes going to the face mask. Whichever one I end up with I don’t know at this stage, but she indicated hers is the biggest style and even it didn’t sound as big as the brain had worked out it would be.
Then of course, I was brought back to earth when someone had me consider just how bad is this anyway? At least I’m not going to be having a bladder bag or an artificial limb, etc. I’m really quite lucky in comparison!!
My quality of life will improve a hundred fold according to those in the know! How bad can that be??
