Planned Obsolescence

My CPAP, I was going to show you the 'before,' but I didn't want to take a picture of my gear. It's seen better days. As in, kinda gross if you really look. Turns out, my stuff is so old, I can't find a good image at least 400 pixels wide no matter what I Google.

A nose pillow had popped a leak, so I called Apria to get new ones. Headgear, too, while we're at it.

And then nothing happened. So after a week (usually the UPS box shows up on my porch right after I hang up the phone), I called.

Turns out, the 'Adams Circuit' has gone the way of the Linotype despite being a perfectly functional system. I can wait for back order or get fitted for new gear.

New gear that does the same basic thing, it's just shaped differently.

So I got new gear. They don't have anything with cotton straps, and the Adams Circuit stuff I had with neoprene straps gave me rashes. So I'll probably have to go back to wrapping a t-shirt around my head before I strap the stuff on. Which sucks. When I asked about cotton or otherwise hypoallergenic straps, I was greeted with the same blank stares I got seven years ago when my now-obsolete gear was state of the art.

A CPAP is about the un-sexiest thing you can wear to bed. If your wife finds you interesting in the sack, this thing will cure her of that. It's cumbersome, too. The only thing worse than sleeping with a CPAP if you have sleep apnea, is sleeping without a CPAP.

You can only make it more un-sexy if you're T-Shirt Head, the weirdo who wraps a t-shirt around his head and then straps on the iron lung.

There's only one plus I can see to my new gear. The old gear had the air hose go up between my eyes & over. The new one trails down. Meaning I could theoretically go back to reading in bed until I fall asleep, something I used to do a lot.

Of course now I wear glasses, but I can still read without them, I just get a headache if I do it very long. And since the hum of the CPAP pump is now a powerful Pavlovian sleeping pill, I doubt I could read long enough to get the headache. Of course, that's if the t-shirt wrapped around me to protect my delicate skin from the straps doesn't also prevent me from seeing to read.