Argh, Oxygen!!

I woke up around 5:30am-ish this morning, feeling a terrible headache and feeling kinda pukish. And then, gosh darn it, realized my oxygen cannula was laying next to me, and not UP my nose. This is the 2nd time it's happened in two weeks, I've just pulled it off in the middle of the night for some reason. By the time I really got up this morning, a little after 9, I felt like crap. After breakfast and being up for a little bit, I finally just had to lay back down again, and took a 2 hour nap. It's so irritating when that happens! A couple people suggested taping it to my face, but I have allergies to that, so I'm just gonna have to figure out something!

In thinking about oxygen in the wee hours of the morning when I was trying to drift back to sleep, I realized that around this time of the summer about 7 years ago, I was put on oxygen 24/7, after my first visit to Cleveland Clinic. Prior to that, I had had it for abouit a year for wearing at night only, which I admit, I was horrible with. In fact, I fought it. I had been put on it at night when I went to the ER with high fever and chills on day, and I think the ER staff was completely freaked out over my o2 sats. That was a time when I really didn't understand what o2 sats were, what were good numbers, etc. So I eventually got set up with o2 for nightly use, and I was only half complacent. I even tried to get the o2 company to take it back. I told them I didn't feel any different being on it. They sent a respiratory therapist to my house, so she could check my sats, and let me know when/if they'd take the machine from me. I think I scared the crap out of her, too. She told me she could not possibly recommend taking the o2 machine from my house with sats that low. I still didn't know or understand what they were, I was just very irritated that she wouldn't take the machine!!!

So fast forward about a year and a half later. I had quit my teaching job because I was so terribly sick my last year there, and my doctor told me with tears in her eyes to quit. Several months after that, my doctor referred me to Cleveland, and I went, expecting to be tested for all kinds of things, and also expecting it to be talking about transplant. It didn't quite get to that point. The doctor I saw told me I needed to start coumadin (I didn't know what that was really), and that I need to wear my o2 24/7. That shocked me terribly. I cried almost all the way back home in the back of the van. All I could think about was "What would people think of me with it on???" I have always always been a very self-concious person growing up. I had hated the way I looked for many years. I never considered myself pretty or attractive, and all I could think of at that point was, well I'm really gonna look like a freak now!!!

My first "outing" with o2 was in August 2001, at the Lewiston Art Festival. I don't know what possessed me to go there for the first time in public with o2!!! There are literally THOUSANDS of people at that festival every year walking around, and I usually know at least a dozen people walking around!! And I DID run into people I knew, who seemed pretty shocked to see me with o2! I couldn't even focus on the art most of the time, I kept focusing on what were people thinking seeing me with o2???

For the next couple years, I was very aware of my surroundings every time I went out to the stores or wherever it was I was going. I felt ashamed, kinda. And I hated running into people I knew while wearing o2. It meant that I had to explain, again, what was going on with me. But eventually it started to get better. And that was because I was actually feeling better with it on. All the years I hadn't been with oxygen, I don't know how my body actually accomodated for the loss. And ever since going to Cleveland, and getting my tests done, I realized that even though I am very different with my o2 sats than most people (80 at rest on 3L, or as low as 44 *gasp* while walking on 6L), the o2 was just as beneficial to me. I'm sure my organs started partying with all the o2 they started getting when I started wearing it all the time! I finally understood what o2 sats meant, and that although my body was different from others, and used to the low o2 sats, I really really needed to wear o2 all the time, despite the fact I felt "fine" without it!!

Nowadays when I go out, I could give two hoots about what people think with my o2 on. Well, I take that back a little. There are times when I don't wear it. Like at a restaurant, or going out to a bar. But I almost always have it with me. And when I am out in the stores or wherever, I usually forget that it's even on my face. I don't try to hide from people I know, and I gladly spread the word as to why I'm even wearing it in the first place. So as much as wearing oxygen isn't an anniversary I really would like to celebrate, I am thankful that it's been keeping me going all these years, along with my meds!!!!

And in celebration, I would love to share oxygen cartoons created by a lovely friend, Leslie Polss. Her cartoons have been fabulous, and I can totally relate to them, as well as some of my other phriends, I'm sure!!

http://www.sobtoons.com/gal02.html