Breathing Continued

After 6 nights using a CPAP -- to keep me from stopping breathing at night, I am somewhat getting used to it.

I find myself going to bed later and getting up earlier just to avoid using the machine! However, I have to admit that I am sleeping better.

My nights used to be what I called "light sleeping." Now I do heavy sleeping. I get into bed, read a little with my book reader and then put on the mask and start the machine. I seem to fall asleep much quicker and wake only rarely at night, and seem to be dreaming a lot--all different from without the machine.

I do feel more rested, and have noticed more ambition during the day. So, it looks like a good change, even though it seems like a real nuisance!

Margo adds, "I am a lot more rested and ambitious too with Russ sleeping quietly!"

Bernice Abrahamzon died Wednesday

An email sent to the Northwest Regional Writers -- local writers group founded by Bernice

"I just found out that Bernice died yesterday morning (Wednesday, Jan.25) at the the Frederic Nursing and Rehab Community where she'd been cared for since Jan.13.
The funeral will be on Saturday, Jan 28 at the Lewis Methodist Church at 11 o'clock, with visitation at 10. That's all I know at the moment.
I think we should keep our February assignment of writing tributes to Bernice."

Machine Breathing

Click to Listen to me Breathing

I made it through the first night with the CPAP machine and face mask. I put it on at 10:30, took it off a couple times at night for a few minutes and took it off at 7:00 am.

I actually did sleep better and didn't wake much during the night. So far this morning, I don't notice anything different, don't feel like a "young man" again, but as the tests did show I needed this machine, I will continue to use it for now.

Before going in for the test Monday, I searched sleep apnea on the internet I found a series of face, tongue and throat exercises that are supposed to help solve the problem.

There is a tremendous amount of junk medical advice on the internet--all sorts of quacks peddling their ideas and products. I go to www.mayoclinic.com, or the Cleveland Clinic or Webmd or the big organizations supporting groups like the American Cancer Society or the American Sleep Apnea sigith at www.sleepapnea.org. The Federal Government National Institutes of Health (NIH) has much of the latest research available.

Also, many articles said that weight loss might help. I have already decided to drop 25 lbs in 2012 (my New Year's resolution that I started on December 20th and have managed to get down 5 lbs in the 1st month). There is surgery that may help also.

Well prepared ahead of time, I asked Doctor Hansen (yes--he is of Danish roots), about all the options. His answer "You have very severe sleep problems. You stop breathing almost every minute. In your case, the exercises, weight loss and even the surgery would probably not work. I don't understand how you have managed to live with it when it is so severe."

I imagine medical researchers will some day find a better solution than this machine and face mask, but in the meantime, I plan to try to get used to it.

Did you know that the main reason most men snore is evolution? Back in the caveman days, the man who slept with his family in the cave and snored loudly echoing out the cave entrance scared off the saber toothed tigers. Those who didn't were eaten and couldn't pass on their genes to the next generation.

Out of Breath!

Last night I spent in the Mayo Sleep Center learning if I was sleeping soundly. This morning I found I was not and went home with a breathing machine.

It happened after I had surgery on my knee in December. The nurses said that my blood oxygen level was too low—and the alarm kept going off while in recovery room. Before I could have my knee replacement, I needed to have a check on why I wasn’t getting the oxygen level needed.

The possibilities included lung problems, heart problems, circulation problems or breathing problems. I went through a series of tests that ended up clearing everything but the breathing, leading to my stay over last night.

I went in at 7:00 pm. First a dozen or so electrodes were glued to me. Some in the hair, some near the eyes, some near the heart and one on each leg below the knee to record electrical signals from brain, eye muscles, heart, and leg movement. Two elastic bands with electronic sensors were stretched around my chest and belly. A microphone for recording snoring taped to my pajama top. A tube to just below the nose to register air flow.

The test was to be in two phases. First at 9:30 I was to try to go to sleep while they recorded 4 hours. Then a breathing machine, called a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP)—an air pump would be hooked to a nose mask to assist in breathing.

The CPAP theory is that the dangling stuff in the back of my throat, the stuff that rattles when one snores, was relaxing too much and closing the airway when I slept. The machine senses when I breathe in and pushes in a little extra air to blow the danglers out of the way, then relaxes to let me breathe out again.

The test went as scheduled, and I did manage some sleep in the quiet darkened room. The machine was somewhat uncomfortable, the surroundings uncomfortable, but I had stayed awake most of the previous night to assure sleeping during the test.

At 9:00 in the morning, I met with Dr. Hansen, a sleep-ologist. He showed me colored graphs, charts, tables of numbers and all sorts of wonderful scientific readings that said one thing: I am a lousy sleeper. The solution is a CPAP for nights.

So, I went to the Mayo Sleep Store and spent an hour getting one and learning how to use it. Medicare will pay 80% of the cost (at first I just rent it), if and only if I have it on and working at least 4 hours each night average for the test period of about 6 weeks. The machine is smart enough to record the time I am really on it, so there is no cheating.

“You will feel a whole lot better with this machine. You stopped breathing an average of 60 times per hour and never got into the deep REM sleep until the machine part of the test. You will be surprised at how much it will improve your life!” said the Doctor and the Pharmacist.

My life has been reasonably good, and I wasn't really aware of problems with breathing, but the doctor assured me that I would feel invigorated--like a young man again!

So, beginning tonight I try to get used to the thing. Having a face mask, even if it is just over the nose, strapped to my head and a vaccum cleaner type hose (much smaller diameter) running to the bedside machine will be a challenge for me and Margo. It is very quiet, relatively small, and pretty much foolproof, so I guess it will be a matter of seeing if I can adjust to it. About 1/3 of the folks who try one out don't continue as it bothers them too much.

My knee replacement doc says that I have to be on the machine for the stay over night a day or two after surgery--or they won't do it. That adds to the motivation!

Maple Syruping Tale --A Science Experiment

Back in the early ‘60s, we were making syrup pretty much the same way Great Grandma, one of those NY Yankees come to Wisconsin, made it in Maple Grove Township near Barron WI. She married a green Swede, just barely off the boat, and taught him to make syrup with buckets, spiles and a big round kettle, that doubled for making soap and scalding the hogs.

We had upgraded to a flat pan, a hundred 3-gallon cherry tins (from the bakery), and metal spiles, getting them from Norman Anderson over at Cumberland. “Have you heard the latest,” Norman told us when we got some supplies that year, “some folks have taken to hooking up the milking machine vacuum pump and tubes or pipes to the maple trees and suck the sap out. They get more sap.”

Well, that was sure something new! We milked 25 cows on the farm, and maple syruping was more of a hobby those days than a business, so Dad wasn’t much interested in tubing.

Already at age 14, I was planning to become a scientist. I had a telescope, microscope, chemistry and electronics kits and thought science was everything. I was feeding old Brahma, the boss cow with the strange hump, more and more grain, keeping track of the milk production to see if it was profitable.

We had a lovely large sugar maple in the hard between the house and barn, It was our best shade tree—probably 100 years old and at least 3 feet in diameter. We put 5 buckets on it every year, and it gave the sweetest and most sap of any tree in the woods nearby where our 100 buckets hung.

Well, being intrigued with the idea of vacuum on a maple tap, I just had to try it. I found the long garden hose and put on a fitting to hook it to the milker pump vacuum line, ran it to the tree and rigged up a tap that hooked to the hose without any vacuum leak. The vacuum line ran to the milkhouse where I hooked it to the step-saver bucket so the sap would come in directly to the bucket from the tree.

After the morning milking, I hooked it up, with Dad skeptically watching me to make sure I didn’t mess up his milker system. The vacuum line check valve ran at 15 psi for milking cows. I left it at that, turned on the vacuum pump and watched. The other 4 pails were dripping slowly that morning. In my vacuum tank, I could see through the clear tubing at the step saver, that sap definitely was coming in at a faster rate! It worked! Even Dad was impressed!

Well, sometimes a scientist must experiment more. “I wonder what will happen if I bring the vacuum up to 20 psi,” I thought and then followed through tighting down the check valve watching the pressure creep up to 20. Sure enough, the sap was now running a tiny stream rather than just the drips, looked like double the rate of the pails.

I got the big pipe wrench and tightened the check valve down as far as it would go. The pressure gauge rose to 21, 22, 23,… and soon pinned at 25, while the pump motor strained to pull the vacuum deeper and deeper. Sap gushed into the step-saver.

All of a sudden I heard and explosion outside. I shut off the pump and rushed outside to see what had happened.

The tree was there, but didn’t look like a tree at all. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Dad, who was in the middle of his morning wheat bisquits, had rushted out too. After studying things, he said “Man alive Russell, you must have put so much vacuum on that poor tree, you sucked it inside-out! You and your science experiments have ruined our best shade tree! No more monkeying with the vacuum pump.”

I never felt the urge to try vacuum on a maple again. However, an interesting thing happened. The tree, besides being inside out, was dried out and when I took the chainsaw to cut it up, the chunks just fell apart into nicely split sizes. It was ready-made for burning!

I did try this later on an old oak, thinking I would get firewood in a hurry with that too, but it was so filled with holes, squirrels and birds, the step-saver bucket kept plugging up with them and I really couldn’t get much vacuum with the leaks. I patented this method for making firewood, but recommend it only for younger trees that are still sound!

Those of you trying for high vacuum on your maple tubing lines, should take care when you get over 25 psi, and remember my experiment or you might turn your whole sugar bush inside out. Maples inside-out probably look just as ugly as one of us would look with our insides on the outside.

I did go on to be a scientist. However, I was always careful in my experimentation to never push things to the limit. If you don't learn from your mistakes, you are not a very smart person!

Maple Syrup History Book

Took 28 books along Saturday the 21st to the Annual Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producer's meeting and sold all of them at $10.00 each and then ran out!

You Must Count!

This week we order garden seeds!


You Must Count!!!

“Did he practice an hour each day last week?” queried Mr. Green sharply?
“Yes” replied mom. “He even practiced Sunday!”

This was not what he wanted to hear. If I had skipped practicing my saxophone he would have still had hope. It must be that I was just incompetent. Worst of all, just a few months earlier, Dad had sold a milk cow to pay for my brand new saxophone.

All the spring and summer of my 7th grade Mr. Green came to Cushing school for individual lessons each week. I learned how to control my mouth (embrochure), the fingerings and soon could make a pleasant sound and a joyful noise. I could rattle through scales and the notes on the page easily, but that wasn’t good enough.

“You must count!” exclaimed Mr. Green after his tenth try at explaining how notes had different durations. I knew the theory but it just did not click in my brain and fingers. The sax lesson book had page after page of technical exercises teaching new sharps and flats and increasingly complex mixtures of variable duration notes and rests, but no familiar songs.

I became concerned that I was not up to the mark. My parents assured me that the sound was good. Playing the melody in our old piano song books at home sounded good even to me. With increasing dread I faced my weekly lesson of scales and exercises.

In early August, Mr. Green announced that lessons would end and not start up until the new band teacher started in the fall. On the last page in the lesson book he wrote for my new teacher “You must count!!” “Five weeks on this lesson!”

September came too quickly. I had continued to practice on that page, having the notes wonderfully memorized but totally in the dark about counting. I debated tearing out the page. I liked playing the sax, but dreaded the coming lesson with a new teacher seeing that page.

Mr. Bilderback was young, stocky, with closely cropped hair. “Excellent tone! Great technique!” he exclaimed after having me play a few scales to get acquainted. “You must have been playing for several years!”

The moment I dreaded all summer came as I opened the book to the heavily annotated page. “I can’t count” I said quietly trying to keep from blubbering. He took the sax, pretended to wipe of the mouthpiece and played the short piece I had been working on all summer. This was the first time I actually heard how it was supposed to go. He handed it back and said “Well, let’s see how it sounds?”

Imitating his rhythm I rattled it off.

“That was great! You must have figured out what was wrong over the summer!” He turned to the next page. As we started each new lesson after that, he first played it for me, and soon I did learn how to count.

In his first five minutes with me, Mr. Bilderback made the whole difference.

Bernice Abrahamzon in Frederic Nursing Home

Bernice Abrahamzon is in the Frederic Nursing home. Her address is
Bernice Abrahamzon
Frederic Nursing and Rehab Center
205 United Way East
Frederic WI 54837
Her 91st birthday is Saturday.
Her friend, Alice, tells me Bernice has lost a lot of weight and is bedridden and hardly looks herself until she smiles and starts to visit. She is prepared to move to the next chapter.

"Life is like a novel. You can guess what will happen on the next chapter, but you will not know until youre there."

Weekend Up North

Dad and Me buzzing wood on the farm 1950s



I took a break from southern MN and spent the weekend and Monday at the Cabin in WI. It was so mild, didn't take me a cord of wood! Less snow up there than down here in Pine Island. All sorts of vehicles out on Little Butternut Lake and in Atlas--so the ice must be pretty thick. The weekend was beautiful with 30s, sun and hardly any hint of winter!

Chuck (from Luck History Society) and I are planning a session for beginning maple syrup makers in Cushing in early March. The December meeting at Anderson Maple was more aimed at small producers becoming larger and automating. Probably the first or second week of March on a Thursday night. I think we will try the upstairs museum room 2 as it is heated now!

The Luck Area Historical Society is planning an early March "get acquainted with the new Polk County Museum Director" session for representatives from local historical societies--probably the first or second Tuesday afternoon of March. Margo and I, my new knee willing, plan to make aebleskivers for the afternoon lunch. Judy W is organizing it.

Saturday is the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers annual meeting in Neilsville, WI. Our GPS says that we leave Pine Island, head to Red Wing and then catch Hwy 10 into WI to Neilsville, about 130 miles away. We plan to leave Sat am, catch the meeting, and return in the evening, weather permitting. Saturday is predicted to be 30s and Sunday 45!

Friday of this week I visit the Sleep Studies unit at Mayo to learn about sleep apnea, something Margo says I have--quit breathing and then snort to life at night! My regular doc says lose 20 lbs and it will likely go away--so starting December 20th, I began a diet and as of the first month I have lost 5 lbs. I am trying to change my pattern of eating as well as eat stuff good for me rather than stuff that just tastes good. Not too hard so far, and the 5 lbs reinforces me to keep on doing it. I really don't think I could adjust to a machine and face mask -- the cpap machine that is the usual treatment. I wonder if I couldn't rig up a bicycle tire pump and a face mask and Margo could just give it a couple of pumps when I get to snoring too loud! She says it wakes her up anyway.

Waking up abruptly several times a night is pretty handy at the cabin where I have to come down stairs from the sleeping loft to feed the wood stove to keep the cabin toasty. Between waking up to breathe and waking up to drain my radiator, I do miss out on some sleep. But, now that I am retired, there isn't much need to be lively and wide awake during the daytime anyway....!

It takes me three days of warming the cabin up to get the lady bugs and houseflies lively again. A two-day weekend is just right--they stay in hibernation waiting for real spring to come around. There is no heat in the cabin if I don't use the wood stove--of course I have totally shut off the winter until I return for maple season in mid March.

An Amazing Amazon event--have sold 9 online books already including 2 of the very latest on Maple syruping history! Of course the total profits of almost $25 goes to the history society, but it is pretty nice!

Bernice Abrahamzon Birthday--and Cancer

Bernice turns 91 this month. For a half century she has been a writer for the Inter-County Leader. She is a founding mother of the Indianhead Gem and Mineral Society as well as the Northwest Regional Writers.

She has just found out she has pancreatic cancer with grim prospects. You can send her a birthday card


Bernice Abrahamzon
3446 115th St
Frederic, WI 54837-4664