Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Nocturnal Emissions

Dave snores. It's not so bad. Mostly it's just one big chainsaw outburst after a nice six- or seven-minute interval during which he does not breathe at all. It's called sleep apnea, and it wouldn't be a problem except for that danger of death thing. There's supposed to be a significant increase of mortality among people with sleep apnea, although no one mentions that dying in your sleep is pretty much the ideal way of going about it, and besides, how do they know the apnea got them? If they just notice people die after they haven't breathed in a while, that could be dang near anything. Anyway, right after I diagnosed this condition off the internet, and put in ten or fifteen years of nagging, Dave went in for a sleep study. He was worried about it because he has trouble sleeping and he couldn't imagine that being wired up in a strange bed was going to be conducive to dropping off. But it wasn't a problem. They just drugged him right up and out he went. He concluded that the reason he had trouble sleeping was no one had given him the cool drugs before, and thought that should solve the whole thing, but they weren't going for it. Surprisingly enough, they also decided he didn't have apnea, or at least badly.

So now I'm putting what I thought was apnea in the same category as Other Odd Metabolic Metrics Of Dave. For instance, he has a pulse of around seventy beats an hour, his cholesterol is below zero (he eats so much butter the fatty deposits slide right out of his bloodstream), his blood pressure indicates his circulatory system is more of a puddle, and he requires little oxygen while sleeping, shutting down like a frog in ice. At any rate, I've quit worrying about the snoring. It was never as impressive as that other noise he makes from time to time while asleep, a high-pitched high-decibel ripping volcanic blast that causes regiments to leap out of bed and stand at attention, and wood-chippers and leaf-blowers to revere him as a god. I am, as regular readers know, far too much of a lady to divulge the source of this phenomenon, but it is world-class.

He claims I snore, too, enough to ripple wallpaper and make the shades go up and down and change the channels on the TV in the next room, but he is given to hyperbole. My main problem while asleep is that I am a fountain of drool. I wake up several times a night to discover the lower half of my face has gone slack, sprung its elastic and sprawled over the pillow. And since I am primarily a stomach-sleeper, this means I am waking up with one cheek and nostril in the Atlantic Ocean. I roll to the other side and plant the other cheek in the Pacific. There's no escaping it.

I didn't always drool. It started on a specific day, the day I had my lower wisdom teeth sawed out of my face at age sixteen. Dr. Mengele recommended I press tea bags to my gums if the bleeding was a problem, but I was unable to fit that many tea bags in my mouth. The bleeding went on undiminished for a good four days, during which time my digestive system had time to come up with a new plan for the hours I was asleep, and drooling was a central component. This became the default plan, and I probably can't undo it without duct-taping my mouth shut, and that makes me nervous. Sure as shit, some rapist would pick that night to pop by.

It's not a minor amount, either. I lose a pound every night, and it's a pound of drool. There's enough DNA there to connect me to fifty years of felonious activity. If I die and enough people decide they miss Murrmurrs and want to bring me back, this is the first place they should look for cloning material. It won't even be dry yet.

25 comments:

  1. In our house the smaller portion and both cats snore. Not unfortunately in unison. Or even in harmony. And, like you, I dribble. Buckets. Sigh. So does one of the cats.

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  2. Wow, Dave sounds like a medical marvel. Labs would pay big bucks just to study him. Would be easy work if they laid off the needles.
    Love that iddy biddy sink as an answer for your drool. Perhaps super absorbent diapers as pillow cases?

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  3. Good grief, night time sounds monumental at your house, Murr. Thanks for a wonderful and witty account of the hazards of coupledom through sleep. What with the noise and drool it's a wonder you can wake up in the morning neither drowned nor deaf.

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  4. Menopause had made me sweat so much, night and day, that I've no moisture left in me to drool anymore. On the other plus side, I rarely have to pee anymore, either.

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  5. Oh, lord. Good thing I read this at home before going to work. If I'd used it as my "cigarette break" the whole office would have been charging down the hall to see what I was shrieking about. Haven't laughed out loud like that since the last time I watched an Eddie Izzard routine. My dog actually left the room in a bit of a panic---possibly to call 911. I've told my husband that the word "snoring" cannot be applied to any sound made by ladies like us---he is allowed to tell me I was "humming" in my sleep, but that's it.

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  6. Hmm - you're a face sleeper and you drool. I'm a back sleeper and I stop breathing about five times an hour. I think you have the better end of the stick. Disposable diapers for pillowcases sounds like a great solution.

    Dave is an alien. A space alien. did he fall to Earth?

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  7. I love the images that have been implanted in my brain by this post. They will make me smile all day long!

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  8. I wrote a post called Snore Stopper. It describes how we significantly decreased night time snoring by raising the head of our bed. It helped my gastric reflux problem too, which is why we tried it in the first place. The snore stopper effect was a nice bonus...

    http://gogreygirl.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/snore-stopper/

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  9. "If they just notice people die after they haven't breathed in a while, that could be dang near anything," almost killed me.

    Then the rest of the post finished me off. I am dead. My family thanks you for the life insurance money.

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  10. :-) short bursts of machine-gun fire, after ominous ranging silences, is the analogy I use. But (I always hasten to reassure her) ladylike machine-gun fire.

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  11. If I haven't drooled, I haven't actually relaxed.

    It's when I am drooling during the day that I get people's attention, really.

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  12. I'm a drooler too. Its beyond icky. My pillow is stained.

    My hubby is a metbolic oddity as well. His regular pulse is 55. He has a tendency to set off alarms when in the hospital. His blood pressure, always low, occasionally drops drastically and so does he. And his cholesterol used to be sky high but has now dropped to perfectly acceptable levels. This is unexplainable considering he exists on a diet of greasy bar food and hostess whenever he's out of my sight. He also snores. Loudly.

    Some things are truly inexplicable.

    ♥Spot

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  13. Leaf blowers and wood chippers? I am awed! (Also odd, but that's another story). And I'm convulsed in laughter. I can't breathe. My stomach hurts. Ouch.

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  14. Thanks for the laugh, I really needed it and this was one long and awesome belly moving laugh.

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  15. I am a drooler, there I said it! And that other thing Dave does, well, let's just say it's a good thing I'm single because mine are so loud I wake myself up and piss off the dog.

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  16. Ah, the nocturnal music of married bliss. The body relaxes, the snortings, rumblings and emissions begin. Himself has a wide range of sounds ranging from a small steam engine puffing uphill to a jackhammer drilling through granite. But every now and then he throws in a bagpipe Piobaireachd in an attempt to placate my Scottish heritage. I marvel that one nose can make so many disparate sounds all at once. I'm more like Dave: moments of silence followed by an apneatic overture. I think it's because I'm engrossed in my dream and when there's a scene change, I remember to breathe.

    Drooling is pretty rare but once Himself left Lake Ontario on the cat's head which made the dog laugh a lot. I did wonder though: does Pootie have a crusty head?

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  17. "Dr. Mengele" got me but good. And this: Anyway, right after I diagnosed this condition off the internet, and put in ten or fifteen years of nagging, Dave went in for a sleep study.

    This one really got me chuckling. I love how your commenters like to pick out phrases that grab them. That's when you know you're firing on all cylinders. Great one, Murrbaby.

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  18. Pootie is always available for a photo op, being a ham of a hound, but he politely declines to sleep with me anymore.

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  19. Laugh out loud funny post, as usual...

    I'm a snorer/drooler too, Murr...I come from a long line of female snorers. I'll never forget the first time my soon-to-be husband spent the night at my parents' house. Upon hearing chainsaw-like eruptions from the next room, he inquired, "Is that your dad?" Hanging my head, I answered, "No...my mom."

    My snoring doesn't bother Jim though...he sleeps with earphones hooked into his computer, listening to old TV shows like Hogan's Heroes...the horns from the theme song drown me out...

    Wendy

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  20. Ah yes. You write words many of us would't think to put into print yet we experience their likeness. Your choice of pics are so apropos too!!

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  21. Murr, I wonder how many people out there actually do enjoy a good night's sleep, undisturbed by emissions of sound, sweat and drool from self or bedmates? Do they exist at all? (Un)fortunately I learned early through thin walls from parents directly descended from locomotives and a Pug determined to outsnortle the humans, how to sometimes sleep through such things. Then came middle age and regularly waking up from dreams of being on fire only to find myself drenched from the bucket of water apparently thrown on me to douse the flames. The only benefit being I don't notice the copious drooling as much. Tip: I find a satin pillowcase feels nice and dries a lot faster than cotton. Thanks for making this something to have a good laugh about! I'll try to remember it in bed at 2am when I'm about to strangle my boyfriend.

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  22. One should always be in a light frame of mind when strangling one's boyfriend.

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  23. A truly wonderful post, Murr. Your choice phrases should become part of the lexicon.
    My heart rate is about 60 or so and cholesterol so low that the doctors hate me because they can't nag about my 100 extra pounds of lard. I do snore when I am over tired and as to the other end, Tanya informed me I gassed an entire rail car of passengers on our way back from Moscow to Dnipropetrovsk. I was asleep so pleaded innocent.

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  24. That was wonderful. I'm going to tweet this. I usually only tweet really weird stuff, so be proud.

    I had a friend in Japan who was healthy as corn and only 38 years years old when he died in his sleep. After he died, I whined non-stop until my husband agreed to get a sleep apnea test.

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  25. I went in to see a sleep doctor for insomnia and they scheduled a sleep study for me. The system is kind of like the old "Greek Restaurant" routine on Saturday Night Live where, no matter what you order, Jim Belushi just makes "cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger". The sleep study people are looking for apnea and nothing else but apnea. They gave me a sedative which nicely cured my insomnia for the one night.

    They found what they were looking for and I was issued a CPAP machine. It worked great for the apnea as it prevented me from going to sleep at all. That, in addition to my wife's snoring, pretty much kept me up all night.

    I talked my wife into doing a sleep study and, as you can guess, they discovered she had apnea!! So I gave her MY CPAP machine and now she sleeps quietly all night and HER snoring doesn't keep ME awake! Everyone's happy.

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