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In 2010 I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea. The severe part of that diagnosis really surprised me. To treat the condition where you stop breathing due to obstructions in your airway while you sleep, I was prescribed CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) therapy, where, by wearing a mask over your nose and sometimes your mouth as well, air is forced into your airways, keeping the flaccid tissues from closing off your breathing. I am told that many people can take weeks to adjust to the therapy, but I took to it from the first night in the sleep lab where I stayed overnight as they monitored and adjusted the machine.

Before CPAP I struggled to be wakeful and fully alert throughout the day with many a Sunday requiring that I retreat to the bedroom for a 60 or 90 minute nap, a situation that vanished literally overnight.

Over the now many years I have been on this treatment I have learned a number of ways to make it more comfortable and successful, using a holder that supports the hose from the machine to my mask allowing an active sleeper like myself to toss and turn and change positions with less trouble, using a full-face mask that covers both my nose and my mouth because I am such a mouth breather at night that not even a chinstrap can stop it. I also learned that any interruption in the therapy is felt instantly the next morning.

Which is why August 31st is going to be a trial for me.

We have been alerted by San Diego Gas and Electric that on that evening from about 10 pm until about 3 am, our entire complex will be without electric power while vital and overloaded equipment is replaced.

This has happened once before and on that night, I decamped from our condo and spent the evening in a local hotel proceeding directly to work from there the next morning but this is not really a great option this time around. WorldCon, the World Science Fiction Convention, will have just ended and it would be best to limit expenses following the hefty ones the convention will incur. On the bright side, I will have September 1st off so there is no need to be at my most alert the following morning.

I think the best that I can hope for is that I can go out to a movie that evening, come back around or just after midnight and hope that the work has been completed earlier than expected, a situation that my sweetie-wife’s co-worker reported happened with them when this same sort of repair took place in their neighborhood. And if not, well, I can put my mask on, go to bed as usual and when the power is restored the machine will detect my breathing and turn itself on.