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11:58pm February 9, 2013
[Me with bipap mask.] I wish I was a good poet. Because most people look at breathing equipment and see a mildly disturbing medical object. They don’t see these little moments of transformation. From hypoxia to normal oxygen levels in a few seconds, or minutes. From this feeling like breathing is wearing you down because it’s so hard. When running is hard you can sit down. When breathing is hard you can’t quit breathing. But then you put on the bipap and it pushes more air into your lungs and you’re breathing deeper with less effort and you want to cry with relief. All of which is besides the magical effects it has on sleep apnea, too many to count, some instant, some long-term. When my mom started her bipap, she went from barely able to walk around the house, to walking miles and miles every day just for the novelty of it. But to me the best things it does are those moments where you go from not enough air, or air too hard to get, and suddenly there’s enough air and it’s so easy you hadn’t ever imagined it could be this easy again. The first time someone put a bipap on me it was to show me what it would feel like, while I was being diagnosed with central and obstructive sleep apnea. Nobody knew yet I had lung disease that constantly made it hard to breathe, and nobody understood why when they put the mask on me, I begged them, crying, to let me bring it home right now. Air is life and you don’t know it until you’ve been without it, or with too little. I’ve had my fill of turning blue for no apparent reason. When you know air is life, machines that help you get air — while awake, while asleep, both — stop being those scary medical intrusions and start being magical instruments of life. But as much as I can write on the topic, I am not a good poet. Not at conveying this. I just know it’s important enough to say, that I try and say it anyway, without poetry. It would take a poet to tell you exactly what it feels like to suddenly have air, to suddenly not feel that air is impossibly hard work. I can’t do that, not at my current skill level. But I can tell you those experiences are real and beautiful, and that makes the machines beautiful to me.

[Me with bipap mask.]

I wish I was a good poet.

Because most people look at breathing equipment and see a mildly disturbing medical object.

They don’t see these little moments of transformation.

From hypoxia to normal oxygen levels in a few seconds, or minutes.

From this feeling like breathing is wearing you down because it’s so hard. When running is hard you can sit down. When breathing is hard you can’t quit breathing.

But then you put on the bipap and it pushes more air into your lungs and you’re breathing deeper with less effort and you want to cry with relief.

All of which is besides the magical effects it has on sleep apnea, too many to count, some instant, some long-term. When my mom started her bipap, she went from barely able to walk around the house, to walking miles and miles every day just for the novelty of it.

But to me the best things it does are those moments where you go from not enough air, or air too hard to get, and suddenly there’s enough air and it’s so easy you hadn’t ever imagined it could be this easy again.

The first time someone put a bipap on me it was to show me what it would feel like, while I was being diagnosed with central and obstructive sleep apnea. Nobody knew yet I had lung disease that constantly made it hard to breathe, and nobody understood why when they put the mask on me, I begged them, crying, to let me bring it home right now.

Air is life and you don’t know it until you’ve been without it, or with too little. I’ve had my fill of turning blue for no apparent reason. When you know air is life, machines that help you get air — while awake, while asleep, both — stop being those scary medical intrusions and start being magical instruments of life.

But as much as I can write on the topic, I am not a good poet. Not at conveying this. I just know it’s important enough to say, that I try and say it anyway, without poetry. It would take a poet to tell you exactly what it feels like to suddenly have air, to suddenly not feel that air is impossibly hard work. I can’t do that, not at my current skill level. But I can tell you those experiences are real and beautiful, and that makes the machines beautiful to me.