Doc's visit a success, with a lot in the works now. $500 match on offer. Sales/shares/registries needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

Yes, another iPad photo from last night. Still no solution on the other.

Some potential solutions from the doctor today, though. We have a very provisionally provisional working DX, not that she thinks this will absolutely turn out to be it, nor that it's anywhere near the whole of the problem, but a start. There is a form of apnea that is not necessarily confined to sleep, and is not obstructive; it's a misfiring of the central nervous system, in which the body fails to tell itself to keep breathing. Now, I could spend weeks and months trying to schedule a sleep study down in Santa Fe, and spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it . . . or, I could just go straight to a variant of a CPAP system, and that's what she's decided to do. I can order a basic model for something over $350, if I do it soon (it's an end-of-year special, apparently), and then I can see what happens. If it works? GREAT. One big thing down. If not, well, we've short-circuited the time/expense/logistics issues of the study.

So I have a scrip for that machine, plus a scrip for a PORTABLE oxygen concentrator, so that I'm not entirely housebound. Today was difficult, being gone for several hours with no access to the O2. She was quite interested to find that it seemed to be helping so much, especially given the great shape my heart itself seems to be in, so she agrees 1) there's definitely something else at work here; 2) the ER would be no help, and indeed, counterproductive; and 3) I've been handling it the right way. She has also scheduled comprehensive bloodwork for Monday. We'll wait to see whether I need the follow-up on the 21st or not; if not, my next visit is slated for late January. In the meantime, next month might see some Holtor monitor testing and some work with her practice's Doctor of Oriental Medicine. Also a lot of crossed fingers and a lot of prayers that everything goes okay from here on in. It's really frightening to wake up every single night feeling not precisely like you're going to die, but rather, that you're already in the middle of dying. And I want to live.

Lots of expenses coming down the pike (first one already here in yesterday's mail), and we need to make some sales. Given the circumstances, I'm leaving up the donation link, too, and the registries have some new items on then, mostly lower-priced, to replace stuff damaged by the RV or given away when we first moved into it seven years ago. Darling Yasu also has a diary up for us, and there's a $500 match on offer, so please T&R and share. Please also share our links:

• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. Still waiting for them to resolve this fulfillment/shipping problem they have with their site. Even so, I've added some things (kitchen/dining room stuff mostly), most of which are comparatively reasonably priced. Now, it's going to be mostly odds and ends that make this place more liveable, because of the sheer volume of stuff destroyed by too many years in the RV (e.g., by the oven and stovetop, by the wiring, by the water, by the mold, etc.), or that we simply gave away seven years ago because we had no room and no place to put them and despaired of ever being able to use them again. A CHANGE ABOUT WAYFAIR:  NO MORE CROWDFUNDING. Their Web site coding is bad, and it will not permit crowdfunded items to ship. Items purchased outright arrive in two business days, but you can't even get the others out of the warehouse. I've spent the last month fighting with them about shipping the dozen or so things that folks fulfilled, and today's message was finally terse enough that they did the manual override, four whole weeks later, that I knew they could do but simply weren't bothering. But I'll be removing all the crowdfunding options. I'm supposed to keep my blood pressure down these days.

As I've also been saying, I am still catching up, and will be now for a while. But this is the holiday season, and the sales/commissions from these few weeks are what keep us alive throughout the whole long winter and spring months (to say nothing of what's in the offing medically), so please continue to share the links. And please refer folks to Wings's site (and if you have an endorsement, too, so much the better). I'll be trying, slowly but, I hope, steadily, to get caught up over the course of this week. We have some massive expenses coming down the pike, and a lot of testing yet to be done before I'm out of the woods. So please keep sharing all our links. For now, I'm just so damn grateful to be alive, to have a healthy heart, to be back home with the love of my life and our dogs, the whole world is beautiful. Thanks again, to everybody, and we love you all.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.