Health & Welfare

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Charts like this one have become all too common in the news of late — making investors panic, pension-holders fret and politicians do very little to effect meaningful solutions to the varying crises reflected in these charts.

But the chart above is not an index of the Dow Jones or an index of consumer confidence or an index of Congress’ approval ratings. Rather, this particular chart has me encouraged. In fact, it’s got me jumping for joy! It’s the index of my weight loss since the beginning of the year. And what it shows is that, as of today, I’ve lost 34 pounds in 66 days! With less than a quarter of the year gone by, I’m already nearly a third of the way toward my goal of losing 106 pounds by year’s end!

I have to admit that I’m pretty proud of myself — not only because of how much weight I’ve lost, but also for sticking with it for this long and for my commitment to continue on to my goal. This is certainly change I can believe in! Continued

Who says (with any intellectual honesty) that Obama’s not reaching across the aisle and listening to Republicans? From TPM:

House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said late Monday, following a personal appeal from President Barack Obama at a time the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.

Several officials said a final decision was expected on Tuesday, coinciding with Obama’s scheduled visit to the Capitol for separate meetings with House and Senate Republicans.

The provision has emerged as a point of contention among Republicans, who criticize it as an example of wasteful spending that would neither create jobs nor otherwise improve the economy.

Under the provision, states no longer would be required to obtain federal permission to offer family planning services — including contraceptives — under Medicaid, the health program for the low-income.

That’s one less thing the GOP can use as an excuse not to work with the president on this stimulus plan. So far it has been the president who has done the most compromising, at the detriment of his own party, to try to achieve compromise and agreement. I don’t see the same effort on the part of the GOP to come to a consensus. Are the Republicans going to be part of the solution or just an obstacle to any solution?

Mike at Okiedoke has a bailout proposal that I can really get behind:

If we leave it to Congress, CEO’s and lobbyists, we will just get evermore bits of amended gobblity-goop that results in endless taxpayer debt to bolster bad business practices.

So here’s my one-size-fits-all, nationwide socialist, U.S. corporate bailout proposal:

1. Remove government subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes for business.
2. Institute basic national single-payer health insurance for workers and families.

The country is going deeper in debt anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to use it to help U.S. companies and give health care to Americans, than just give it to the same people who created the mess?
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Yes we can!

As I’ve discussed here previously, I’m a pretty big guy. I’ve even been referred to being “as big as an elephant.” While that is (hopefully) an exaggeration, I can’t help but feel like that in the last week I’ve actually started looking like an elephant when I’m sleeping.

I took a picture of what I look like when I’m ready for bedtime, but it was just too embarrassing to post. The photo on the right shows what my CPAP nasal mask and headgear looks like (without me wearing it). Now imagine it on me with a long air hose coming out of it. It looks like I have an elephant’s trunk.

It looks funny — actually, it looks ridiculous — but it certainly works. The first night I wore it, which was last Wednesday night, I sleep all the way through to my alarm without waking up. Karla said I didn’t even move. I didn’t snore once. What a difference this one little machine can make. Continued

I got my results from the sleep study I had done this past weekend. And, to use the cliché overused by television news anchors, “the results may surprise you.” The results surprised (and frightened) me — and I already knew it was serious.

As a reference, here are a few definitions and standards by which sleep disturbances — and specifically a diagnosis of sleep apnea — are evaluated by. Wikipedia’s article on sleep apnea has the most concise and informational explanation.

Polysomnography of sleep apnea shows pauses in breathing that are followed by drops in blood oxygen and increases in blood carbon dioxide. In adults, a pause must last 10 seconds to be scored as an apnea. [...]

Hypopneas in adults are defined as a 50% reduction in air flow for more than 10 s, followed by a 4% desaturation, and/or arousal. The Apnea- Hypopnea Index (AHI) is expressed as the number of apneas and hypopneas per hour of sleep. Continued

Tags: CPAP, diagnosis, results, sleep, sleep apnea, sleep clinic, sleep study

Why did it take me two days to write about the aftermath of the dreaded “sleep study”? Did it take me that long to recover from the “trauma”? As much as I believed it would be the case, it is not. I simply took the weekend off from any computer access so I could visit family this weekend and also try to catch up on much-needed rest after a severely sleep deprived last couple of weeks. So, after a 48-hour delay, here’s the report from that fateful night…

As the final minutes ticked down before my appointment Friday evening, my anxiousness manifested as surliness that unfortunately bit at those around me. Compounding my unsettledness, severe weather moved through our area about the time I was getting ready to leave, which seemed an ominous sign of things to come. The reality was that it was a perfect picture of my evening: a brief tempest followed by a very calm, uneventful rest of the night — and my personal tempest ended when I walked in the door of the sleep clinic. Continued

Tonight’s the night. I go to the sleep clinic for my doctor-prescribed sleep study. I’m not looking forward to it at all. As I mentioned previously, I hate the thought of someone seeing me sleep — and when I say hate, I mean obsessively abhor. You can ask anyone in my family and they will tell you that no matter how tired I may be, I fight as hard as I can to stay awake if I’m anywhere but my own bed because I don’t want others to see (or worse, hear) me sleeping.

Tonight, the whole focus of my going is for someone to actively watch and monitor my sleeping. The very thought could potentially keep me awake if it wasn’t for the fact that I am so utterly exhausted. Even so, I’ve been fretting this all week and at a much more heightened state of anxiety for most of today. Even now, my stomach is churning. I wouldn’t be doing it if it weren’t absolutely necessary. Continued