Monthly Archives: October 2021
The Sleep Clinic, AKA A Medical Bitch and Gripe Post
I am sure I have mentioned before that I have sleep apnea and I wear a CPAP to sleep. I have always hated wearing that thing, but I’ve gotten so used to getting a great night of sleep, that I really can’t go without it. However, I’ve also mentioned my trigeminal neuralgia. The straps on the CPAP mask aggravate my already damaged trigeminal nerve. Therefore, I go to sleep in pain, and I wake up with pain. I have spoken to the Sleep Clinic about the issue and have discussed with them a surgery that would implant a device, much like a pacemaker, that would have the same effect as the sleep mask, but not be as intrusive. However, the Sleep Clinic wants me to prove that the CPAP failed before they will let me be considered for the other device. Partly, this is because of insurance. I went to the medical equipment specialist that handle my CPAP supplies for a fitting for a new mask a few months ago. The mask they gave me is just as bad, plus I can’t breathe well enough through it, so I had to go down to the Sleep Clinic yesterday for them to try and fit me with a new mask.
That was an ordeal and a waste of time. First of all, the clinic is at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital in the same building as the Headache Clinic, so it’s about an hour’s drive. Second, I don’t have the same confidence in the Sleep Clinic as I do in the Headache Clinic. When I first got the CPAP, they were supposed to follow up with me every three months, yet they forgot about me. It was only because I was having trouble with the CPAP mask and trigeminal neuralgia that they took notice of me again. That had me annoyed when they told me this three months ago. I got a call a few weeks ago wanting me to do a mask fitting before my appointment with the Sleep Clinic’s nurse practitioner on October 26. So I made the appointment and went down.
After trying on several masks, I told the respiratory therapist (RT) how much they hurt. All of which caused me to be in quite a bit of pain for the rest of the day. The RT I met with sent me home with a new mask to try, but I don’t hold out much hope it will work any better. It hurt to wear it for a few minutes down there, just like the others. I don’t know what she thinks it will do to sleep in it that’s different? What really aggravated me was that I had to pay $55 for basically the “pleasure” of visiting a showroom with a hospital bed in it. What bullshit! The lady was nice, but I really don’t think they should have charged me for this. The supply place didn’t charge me for their mask fitting, but because this was done in a clinic, they charged me, even though they did the exact same thing, I had to pay the higher copay to see a “specialist.” I’m also sure they will charge me for the mask they sent me home with.
I have told the Sleep Clinic people that my neurologist has already said that as long as I am wearing a CPAP at night, it will continue to prevent my trigeminal nerve from healing. It told the RT the same thing yesterday, to which she replied that maybe I should ask my neurologist if she has another solution to my sleep apnea. She said it in a very nice and “concerned” way, but I still felt like she was being somewhat dismissive of the advice I’d received from my neurologist. By the way, if I do qualify for the surgical implant, Dartmouth can’t do it (they have no one trained for it), and I’d have to go to the University of Vermont (UVM) instead. At this point, I wish I’d been referred to the UVM in the first place for my sleep apnea. I wasn’t originally sent to them because my doctor, who works for UVM, knows what a pain in the ass they can be. I see my neurologist Tuesday, so will talk to her, and then on the 26th, I’ll see what the Sleep Clinic has to say.
Six Years Ago…
Six years ago today, I arrived in Vermont. It had been a hellacious trip up here from Alabama. My plan had been to drive to Blacksburg, Virginia, the first day to see a friend who was a PhD student at Virginia Tech. Then I’d drive to Albany, New York, for the second leg of my trip getting up the next morning and drive to my new apartment in Vermont. The trip did not go as planned. In Knoxville, Tennessee, while blocked in on both sides by semi trucks, I had no choice but to run over something in the road. Whatever it was punctured my gas tank. I pulled over on the side of the interstate and watched as gasoline poured out from under my car. I had to call 911 and they sent police and a fire truck to make sure everything was okay and put some type of absorbent over the leaked gas.
Close to tears, I called my dad. All of my possessions to begin my new life in Vermont were inside my little car. One spark or a lit cigarette from a passing car and it would have all gone up in flames. My dad called the insurance company and they found me a mechanic, a hotel, and a rental car because it was going to take at least several days before the mechanic could get a new gas tank. The police called a tow truck who loaded up my car and drove me to the mechanic. The tow truck driver was kind enough to wait as the mechanic and I did whatever we initially had to do, and then he drove me to my hotel. He was so nice and kind; he made the whole thing a little more bearable.
I checked into the hotel and waited for my rental car to be delivered the next day. Only one restaurant was nearby, a Mexican restaurant, so that’s where I ate dinner and had a huge margarita. Luckily, I got a call from the mechanic saying they’d been lucky and were able to locate a gas tank at another mechanic in town. They were able to get it late the next day and install it the next. I was stuck in Knoxville for two and a half days, but my car was ready around 11 am if I remember correctly.
Off I was again to see how far I could drove that day. The remember driving through the Shenandoah Valley and thinking I’d never get through Virginia. Finally, I did and continued north. Late that night, I was so tired, I could not drive any further than Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I pulled over at a hotel only to be told there was no room ar the inn. In fact some major convention was in town and few hotels had any vacancies. I finally found one, checked in and quickly crawled into bed and fell asleep. I got up early the next day and drove the rest of the way to my new apartment. That last eight hours and 500 miles was rough, but I did it.
October 7, 2015, I started my new life in Vermont.
Crazy Week
I was sitting on my bed last night trying to decide what to write about today. My week is a lot of miscellaneous stuff. Yesterday, I taught a class that I usually teach once a year and then had a meeting to discuss the applicants for the job opening we have at the museum. Today, I really only have one thing: a doctor’s appointment. I think I am having an adverse reaction to one of my headache medicines, and I need to talk to my doctor to see if he thinks it is the medicine causing the problem or something else. It’s a sensitive and embarrassing issue, so it won’t be easy to discuss, but thankfully, I do feel comfortable enough with my doctor that I can discuss anything with him. But boy do I dread this conversation because it is going to be embarrassing. Then tomorrow, I have an appointment at the sleep clinic about my CPAP machine. Luckily, I don’t seem to have any appointments either away from work or at work. It should be an easy day (knock on wood).
Next week is going to be the really crazy week. Monday, I have a class that I’ve never taught before coming to the museum. I’m really not sure how that’s going to go, but I think there is a good possibility that it will go well. Tuesday, I have two medical appointments. One here in town for blood work, and one down at Dartmouth with the Headache Clinic. Wednesday, I am moderating a panel discussion, and you can never really know how those are going to go. In my experience, they never go quite like I hope they will. They have a life of their own. Then, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons and Friday we will be conducting the virtual job interviews for the applicants we chose trying to narrow down five candidates to two or three to bring to campus.
Hopefully, all will go smoothly, and no major problems or issues will arise.
Thinking of Frost
Thinking of Frost
By Major Jackson – 1968-
I thought by now my reverence would have waned,
matured to the tempered silence of the bookish or revealed
how blasé I’ve grown with age, but the unrestrained
joy I feel when a black skein of geese voyages like a dropped
string from God, slowly shifting and soaring, when the decayed
apples of an orchard amass beneath its trees like Eve’s
first party, when driving and the road Vanna-Whites its crops
of corn whose stalks will soon give way to a harvester’s blade
and turn the land to a man’s unruly face, makes me believe
I will never soothe the pagan in me, nor exhibit the propriety
of the polite. After a few moons, I’m loud this time of year,
unseemly as a chevron of honking. I’m fire in the leaves,
obstreperous as a New England farmer. I see fear
in the eyes of his children. They walk home from school,
as evening falls like an advancing trickle of bats, the sky
pungent as bounty in chimney smoke. I read the scowl
below the smiles of parents at my son’s soccer game, their agitation,
the figure of wind yellow leaves make of quaking aspens.
About This Poem
“Of late, I’ve been actively recording my responses to the seasons. Fall is particularly spectacular in northern New England; the countryside of Vermont hits my bones like warm bands of neon; there’s that palpable change in the air, electric and mysterious. However, in late autumn, one senses the impending, long wintry gloom overtake all reason. At some point, I began to understand Robert Frost and what critics such as Lionel Trilling and Joseph Brodsky argued, which is the darkness that hits the spirit. I think the poem is also an attempt to get out from underneath the shadow of the poet who looms in New England and to trouble the iconicity of the ‘quaintness’ of Vermont.”—Major Jackson
About This Poet
Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, and Zyzzva. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
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