(no subject)

I must opine about crazy election stupidity which I just heard on the radio ... you gotta love that crazy election "policy" stuff.

One of our pollies has unveiled a plan to pay ex-job-seekers severnal thousand dollars once they have kept a job for 12 months. When questioned, he said it was "a hand up, not a hand-out."

I'm thinking a "hand up" is something you give to people when they are most at need, so they can use it to help themselves. So giving money to job seekers specifically so they could buy good clothes for interviews for example would qualify as a "hand up", as would training opportunities.

But giving money to employed folks after they've been employed for 12 months or more ... That's not a "hand up", that's ... well it sounds like bribery, close enough. It's also assuming that jobseekers aren't actually trying 100% to get a job at the moment, which I find to be really rude...

Ahem. Rant over now. Elections might be the least-worst way of doing government that we've figured out so far but OMG they suck ...


r

CPAP

In other news, I spotted a flyer up at The Alfred a few weeks back about a new screening test for sleep apnoea using home monitoring instead of an in-hospital sleep study.

I grabbed it, expecting that they would probably tell me that my seven billion comorbid conditions would exclude me from the study, but to my pleasant surprise they didn't! I've been meaning to get a sleep study done for at least three years but because it's not an urgent thing, it's never got to the top of my "medical to do" pile so I was very pleased at this opportunity to get it done.

Also because I found the flyer when I was busy getting the saline infusions, I didn't even have to make a special trip to the Alfred for the purpose - very efficient!

So yes ... it turns out that I have obstructive sleep apnoea. These are the risk factors for OSA:
- Old age ... well, OK, I'm not old but I'm not young any more either ...
- Decreased muscle tone due to nuromuscular disorder, yes hello EDS.
- Decreased airway size due to obesity.
- Decreased airway thingamajig due to allergic reactions too.
- Family history, yes Dad has it too.
- Drugs which relax the muscles, yup got those too.
- I don't drink and I don't smoke, so that's something I guess...

The study people very nicely provided me with a copy of the results at my request. I haven't had a chance to go over them with the doctor yet, but it looks to my uneducated eyes as if it's saying that 8% of my apneas are central or mixed, not just obstructive. I'm not sure if that's a normal OSA result to have those mixed in or not - can any of you tell me?

So yeah, looks like I'll have a CPAP machine in my fairly near future... lucky me.


PS
Stats! Test says: AHI of 43, and ODI of 56.