Dear Diary,
my day today starts just as shitty as yesterday's ended. The way I used to like my steak before I switched to the dark side of the force and started living vegan. Bloody.
I consciously say living vegan. Not eating a vegan diet. For me, vegan doesn't mean militantly not eating any animal products. Personally, for example, I have given up my beloved honey, which a friend brought from home. At home, that is - I'll probably be beaten for this - in the former Yugoslavia. Croatia? Bosnia or Serbia? In any case, somewhere down there, where I don't think bees are doing so badly. And yet I'm just as happy to do without them as I am to do without jackets, shoes and furnishings made of leather and clothes made of wool. The only inconsistent exception: my Burberry cashmere blanket. I've always wanted one of these, it was on my bucket list, so to speak. Yes, I know, it's a high level of whinging and exceptions are nothing but lame excuses for personal inconsistency. Boy, am I good. I almost convinced myself.
And let's be honest, this doesn't look vegan at all. Yesterday, scrubbing my teeth - which is usually more like scrubbing my gums and not my teeth - was one time too many. Now it's really gone. It has bled through for two days, one night and three visits to the doctor.
The real tragedy?
Constant bleeding in the mouth is a pretty dumb thing to do when you're mask-breathing.
You can't suction me effectively with the nose-mouth mask. With the nose-mouth mask, suction is possible, but you can't sleep with it. Because as soon as the body falls into a deep sleep, the muscles relax. At some point, the lip tension collapses and the mouth can no longer withstand the counterpressure of ventilation. The breathing air takes the path of least resistance and flows out of the mouth instead of into the lungs. The machine notices this in the form of a leak and acknowledges it with a loud alarm. To this day, it is a mystery to me how anyone can not hear this alarm. Unfortunately, it still happens again and again. But that's a story for another day.
If it was „just“ the shrill alarm tone, I could switch it off. I have that much willpower. The problem is breathing, because at some point the oxygen saturation in my blood suddenly drops. This is when it starts to become unbearable. In other words: sleeping with a nose mask is not an option. What does that mean? Well, then two days awake. That's what it means.
