Books

Damn, I've got to start reading some more happy books... I have a terrible tendency to read dense and miserable non fiction. Which is probably why I went through a long stage last year of reading some marvelously escapist sci fi.

Some recent examples: A history of the Dieppe Raid in WWII (complete balls up in 1942 which ended with 6000 dead Canadian soldiers), the "love story" Ali and Nino, set in 1920's Azerbijan. And at the moment, the huge tome "The Clash of Civilizations" by a very experienced british journalist who has lived in the middle east for decades.

This last one, I actually had to put down. Usually I can handle reading about the most extraordinary brutality without getting too squemish. But...One particular situation he describes - in this case the way the old Shah of Iran's secret police tortured it's prisoners - really disturbed me. More than the Afghan wars he witnessed, more than his interview with a certain Bin Laden. Really actively made me wince and worry about what we humans are capable of...

Probably a good thing, this response.

So, I had to put it down. Along with a memoirs of a "dope fiend" and whatever else I'm notionally reading. Time to get some more comics or maybe it's time to reread some Isaac Asimov which I haven't read since I was a spotty teenager :-)

Sleep

Regular readers will remember I have a fun fun condition called Obstructive Sleep Apnoea. It's not directly life threatening, but it is a pain in the arse.

Basically, if I want to sleep, I've been having to plug myself into a device called a CPAP machine. Which works, but is fiddly and somewhat annoying. And makes traveling difficult, let alone spontaneously crashing on a friends couch after a hard nights drinking (not that I do that either... Hmmm.)

Regular readers will also remember I had surgery on a deviated septum back in November 2006, which was supposed to help and possibly cure the apnoea. It didn't, although it did help.

Anyway, after eight or more years of this, I was recently referred to a specialist dentist for an alternative treatment, a kind of weird mouth guard-like device called a mandibular advancement splint (say that three times fast!) which works by pulling your jaw forward and hopefully preventing one's airways from collapsing.

First they had to xray my head in a weird Iron Maiden like device, of which there is one in Melbourne, out Malvern way. Then the nice dentist bloke took molds of my teeth with some vile tasting rubbery substance, and looked at said xrays. Which apparently showed I was an ideal candidate for the mandibular whatsit to work.

And finally, yesterday morning, I picked the thing up (er, after forking over around $1400 for it. Ouch.) So last night was my first night with the thing - and it worked great! I slept like a log! I think the non-deviated septum thing helped as well, so between the two, I'm free of the CPAP machine! Woo!

I'll have to give it a couple of weeks to see how it goes, but I'm very, very, very pleased. It'll make a whole lot of things - notably traveling around the world in June and July - a whole heck of a lot easier. Not to mention visiting friends, and that I don't have a vacuum cleaner like CPAP machine humming next to my head.

And of course, the xrays of my head also showed that my one filling needs some work. Fun. For someone who's not sick I have a shed load of medical bills...!