I LOVE my bed ! I LOVE to sleep ! I LOVE to snuggle down under the covers and dream my dreams ! I do NOT love being woken up in the middle of the night by "friends" texting me at 3:15 AM because they can't sleep. And that is why we have silence mode on our cell phones ! Feel free to text me at any hour of the day or night because my phone will be turned off from the time I turn out my light until I decide to wake up and face a new day. Occasionally I will forget to turn off the ringer but that doesn't happen often. And if it does it is my fault if I am woken up so no harm, no foul.
What I can NOT control is the assortment of sounds that come from my partners various machines that are stuffed in the bedroom along side the bed. The Man has no less than 5 different machines that have alarms and all of them seem to prefer to go off in the middle of the night. Granted they are all attached to him so if the oxygen stops, or his heart stops there is an alarm to wake ME.
Last night was one of those nights. The Man uses a Bi Pap machine at night. It is similar to a C pap machine, just more powerful. The problem is that because he needs to have a constant flow of oxygen so the machine needs to be connected to an oxygen concentrator. If the concentrator fails to work then the alarm on the concentrator goes off. BEEP BEEP BEEP !!! If the concentrator is not delivering oxygen to the Bi Pap machine then the Bi Pap machine's alarm goes off. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!! If the concentrator AND the Bi Pap machine are both failing then his heart monitor goes off BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know that these things never occur at 11 PM while we are still awake. NO . . . . it always waits until 2 or 3 AM when we are in a dead sleep. It is like the fire drills they had when I was in college living in the dorm. You had just fallen asleep when the alarm would start blaring. With luck you were not hung over, just exhausted but you had to get out of bed and out of the dorm until the drill was over.
Now I am flying out of the bed, grabbing my hearing aids because I know The Man will be talking to me so I need to hear him. Besides the hearing aids I have to grab the flash light so I can find my way to the light switch in order to see what the hell is going on. All this time The Man is still asleep. How this is possible I have no idea but it's true. By the time I have ears in and can see where I am going The Man is now waking up and asking, "What's going on?". My reply in my head is, "How the "F" do I know" but my mouth says, "I have no idea what's happening", Now comes the fun part. Trying to figure out at two in the morning where is the problem. My brain has woken up immediately, The Man is still trying to figure out where he is, who he is and what is this strange woman doing in his room. As he begins to focus and realize where the noise is coming from he starts pulling plugs, adjusting wires, reading display screens, and throwing orders to me to get this, that and the other thing. Now I am REALLY awake because I am roaming through the house searching for things he wants. I get orders like, "get me the thing from the cabinet" . . . Seriously ! When I question, "What Thing" and "What cabinet" I get a look that says I must be an idiot for not being able to KNOW exactly what it is he is talking about. I am used to this by now and it doesn't bother me at all because I KNOW EXACTLY WHO the idiot is. I patiently ask questions until I figure out what I am looking for and where I will find it. It's a great game but not at 2 AM.
Needless to say I manage to keep it all under control, fix the problem and go back to sleep. Knowing full well that in the morning when I get up I will get to relive the entire episode with The Man. It will be the topic for the day, phone calls will be made to different companies to complain about their machines and The Man will be thinking about the problem all day trying to come up with ideas to help avoid this happening again. I am the listener . . . I will say nothing, I will not offer suggestions and I will write a blog about it because it really is pretty funny.
OH, and I will also take a nap.
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