The Back Story

As I slept I slowly died. Not all the way, but die I did. Every night hypoxia would take me. I would float in deep sleep dreaming with severe apnea choking away my life. Deeper sleep meant death so my nervous system coped with this threat by nightmare. Scaring me out of the deepest levels of sleep. Shocking me awake. Over and over into the night. Never really asleep never really awake. Snoring and gasping, coughing and wheezing, rolling and dreaming, talking and walking night after night, year after year. Last to bed first to wake. A few hours a night none of it good.

When things got bad I wrote about it. It appears my dreams were trying to tell me something. You are dying. Wake up. Literally you are dying while you sleep and you don't even know it.

I lived in black and white. When I woke as CPAPman I could see every color in the world. It was a shock to have been so blind for so long and to have the lights turned on to all the beauty of the world. Colors so rich and deep I felt them more than seeing them. The warmth of the reds, cool of the blues and the freshness of the greens. A new vision. A new awareness. Felt like a superpower.