And That, Your Honor, Is Why I Killed Her!

Okay, this isn't Mo's first assault on my CPAP. The nose pillows have been an object of fascination going back pretty much as far as she was old enough to be fascinated by anything. There's not much to them, two little wisps of rubber, but you can only get them from an outfit like Apria, and they cost $52 a pair.

Luckily, most of the time I've been on the CPAP, I've had insurance that adequately covers the outrageously overpriced consumables.

But it's not like you can just run to Wal-Mart when you need another pair. Right?

And sleeping without the CPAP, well, if I'm gonna wake up feeling all hung over, shouldn't I at least get the good drunk in first? Because sleep apnea roughly translates to a close brush with alcohol poisoning for the way you feel the next day.



I mean, before I got diagnosed and treated, I thought this was the way everyone felt in the morning: raw in the throat and more fatigued than when I went to bed.

And of course, it's Sunday when this happens. Nobody who sells this stuff keeps Sunday hours. But I started trying to find someone anyway, while fuming at Mo in her time-out chair.



Mo was in the time-out chair for a record amount of time, because while I didn't completely lose my rag (can I get an attaboy?) I was thoroughly angry and nothing I could say seemed to convey that this was not funny. So every time she laughed, I tacked on a minute. I had to reset the timer on the microwave because it will only let you hit the 'minute-plus' button so many times before the button ceases to do anything.




Every time I had to add the minute, I told her, 'That was a mean thing to do to Daddy, he needs that to sleep at night and can't get another on a Sunday.' Or 'This is bad, you don't seem to get it.' 'Nope, this isn't funny, and you can sit in that chair for hours for all I care.'

So I'm calling through the Yellow Pages medical supplies, and the only guy who answered on a Sunday was a guy who supplies stuff for dialysis patients. He said he slept with a CPAP, too, so he could sympathize. 'Apria and Lincare are about it, I think,' he said.

So I tried the latter since I knew Apria, where I've gotten my stuff from in the past, wasn't open Sundays. I got an answering service, and after some runaround, they told me they couldn't help me if I wasn't already a patient. But that I should try Apria, because they should have someone on call.

Well, sort of. First I got a subsidiary who could almost help me.

Mo is still in the time-out chair all this time, by the way. I'm not sure this time-out didn't extend past the half hour mark.

At long last, I get a guy at Apria who will meet me at their building and get me fixed up. Talk about above and beyond.



Mo, meanwhile, had finally managed to get paroled from the chair and wanted to play Kid Pix, but I'd pulled the plug on everything I could think of. No video games, no videos, no treats of any kind.

This finally, at least, got Mo to where she wasn't laughing in my face. Now she was whining while I explained that I love her even when she makes mistakes, but she did a very bad thing and there's consequences to that. If I could think of more things to take away, I'd do it because this was beyond bad behavior. And stop biting your toes. And your fingers. Do you need a bandage? Then get that toe out of your mouth.

When I was getting ready to leave for Apria, by the by, it started to rain heavily. So I waded through the ankle deep water to my car and ran my errand. The waters were receding when I got back.