Poor Chuck

Poor Chuck. He is having a rough time right now. He's laid off. He has a cold. He spilled water on his keyboard so now he can't type J, K, L or use the backspace.

He found out a little bit ago that he has mild sleep apnea, so he has to wear a CPAP at night. It's this little machine that sits next to your bed and has a plastic tube that comes out of it and goes to your nose. It has plastic straps that keep it attached to your head at night. That sucks enough.

As a follow-up, they needed to check the oxygen level in his blood throughout the night. So they sent another machine. This one has a cord that attaches to a little finger-brace for your index finger.

Chuck set to work that night to set up the new contraption. It was beeping and Chuck wasn't meeting it's needs so it started electronically screaming at him. It was the most awful noise. He finally got it to shut up and the Universe decided to give me more noise to deal with, because I LOVE noises I can't control, so it let our neighbor take off in his Diesel truck, come back 2 minutes later, idle in the driveway, do a lap around the block, idle in the driveway for another 2 minutes and finally turn off.

So now Chuck lays down with the finger-brace on his left index finger, cord traipsed across his body and off the bed. He straps his nose-hose on. He puts in his mouth-guard. (He loves that I'm writing this.) He tries to fall asleep but his cold is bad. And when he opens his mouth to cough, the reverse air-pressure makes a Darth Vader noise come out of his mouth. He's like a dragon breathing fire, only there is only the noise and no flames.

At some point I giggled myself to sleep. I awoke at 4:45am to the sound of the beeping finger-sensor. It thought Chuck was dead but he wasn't. He had detached briefly to go retrieve more cold medicine. He came jogging back around the bed, lunged at the sensor and threw it on his finger again. The beeping ceased. He sat on the edge of the bed fumbling with the gel-packs. You know those things - the ones that you cannot open with a chainsaw even though they are "perforated."

I helped him open it. He fell asleep again.

Scoreboard:

Oxygen level: fine
Teeth: un-grinded
Breathing: regulated
Cold: almost gone
Keyboard: fried
Us: laughing