A good day

Today I woke up to an email from Lupa telling me she will be editing my submission to the anthology "Engaging the Spirit World" in the next month. To quote her email: "Just from a first look, the essay overall is good stuff! I'm probably going to have you tease out some ideas in more detail, but this is a good first draft."

::happy gimp squee::

To tell the truth, I thought it was a crap first draft that would never even make it to the editing stage, and that would have been all my fault because I didn't give myself nearly enough time to do a thorough job. If she still likes it after the second read/editing stage, I will endeavor to make it the best it can be. Imagine me being published in both the science and spiritual venues. Wow.

This afternoon, I visited with my pulmonologist about my random sleeping episodes. His instinct was that I have sleep apnea which is causing me to not rest properly. He wanted to try to get me in to the sleep clinic to do an overnight sleep test, but he didn't think they could get me in before I have to go back to NO to do my General Exam. Then I brought up something my friend Lance (who also has SMA) mentioned to me a few months ago. His youngest sister (who also had SMA) died a few years back from hypercapnia-induced renal failure (at least, that was my take on what he told me). She didn't breathe deeply while asleep and didn't exhale enough carbon dioxide. The kidneys act to help "scrub" CO2 from the blood, and because it took doctors a long time to catch Lori's hypercapnia (excessive blood CO2 levels), her kidneys became too stressed and ultimately failed. I brought this up to Dr. R because I also breathe shallowly while asleep, and he said that he had been thinking about hypercapnia as well. So, we decided to skip the sleep test and go straight for a BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure) machine which would be recommended for correcting sleep apnea or hypercapnia, and I don't have to worry about stressing my poor stone-prone kidneys.

Afterwards, we went to Target. I got Christmas presents for Mom and my niece, and I got fun knee high socks and German Black Forest chocolates (dark chocolate squares with a hint of cherry) for myself.

Altogether, a day of accomplishments.