[quote='SuperSleeper' pid='1399' dateline='1330521036']
[parts of this thread were copied from our old forum]
Here's the scenario:
>You are proud of yourself - you've been using CPAP as a member of
>the secret society of "hoseheads"...
That used to be reserved for us Canadians.
> you've tinkered with your own machine.... you may have even
>fiddled with changing your pressure... and you may have gone so
>far as to use CPAP data-analyzing software to help you tweak your
>settings.
Still working on that actually.
> ...at 3:05 a.m. in the morning...
>
>
THE ELECTRICAL POWER GOES OUT.
I guess it's as good a time as any for this.
Whatever is left of Hurricane Sandy at the time is supposedly going to pass us by. Barely. One county over to the east. And who am I to tell that broad that she's not allowed to change flight path?
> You keep waking up every 5 minutes after a bunch of "snortles",
>snores & gasps... and you realize that it's a
lost cause - you
>can't get any
real sleep until the power comes back on
>and your
air-pushing friend whizzes back to life.
That troubles me too.
> Your alarm clock goes off at 6:00 (it had a battery backup)
Or you wind it up.
>and you realize that you didn't get any sleep since 3:05, and the
>power is still out. The temperature in the house has slid from 70
>degrees down to about 62 and you feel a cold chill as you remove >the covers.
And my wife tells me to get my cold hands off of her.
>You get up, go outside, look around, the sun is not yet out, and you
>realize that all the city lights are OFF. Ah, so this is what living in
>uglyqwertyui0pthe country is like! Very pretty. Maybe this won't
> be so bad.
Without electricity I also can't activate the electric starter on the snowblower. I'm really S.O.L.
>You drive back home... and make a soothing cup of coffee using the
>tea kettle and gas stove,
CHEAT! CHEAT! CHEAT!
CHEAT!
>The day wears on with no power. No power by 9:00 pm either, and
>your house temp is now 55. You start to think about your
>CPAP. "
Oh, no... I need that machine to get a good night's sleep
>" you think to yourself, "
Why oh why didn't I get that 12-volt
>connector and a deep cycle battery!"
I thought I read something like you're not supposed to power up the CPAP with a battery or a generator or something like that. Am I mistaken? Or desperate times require desperate measures?
In the morning, the temperature in the living room has gone down to 51 degrees - your outside thermometer reads 22. You pull out your handheld radio to figure out what's going on, but you realize that it takes 4 AA batteries and all you have is 3 AAA batteries. You kick yourself again for your poor planning.
> A neighbor knocks on your door. He asks if everyone is okay in the
>house, and asks if you need to come over to his house - he has a
>wood fireplace and a supply of firewood, and it's keeping his living
>room at a nice comfy 72 degrees.
Damn you and your neighbours. Where do you find nice people like that?
> officials are saying that it may be days or weeks before they can
> bring the entire electrical grid back up again.
Sounds like a good time to check in to the hospital. That mass outage half a decade ago, I don't think I checked with the hospital, but when a tornado swept through our city in 1985, the hospital was the only place in town with auxilliary power. Check in there. Even if to plug in at the emergency ward and hijack a chair.
>How are you going to get a good night's sleep if the power stays off
>for a week?
We haven't been this unfortunate but that would be my first theory.
The worst they could do is throw me out.
>This is going to get real old, real fast.
Ah, everything old is new again.
I have no alternate plan. Try to fall asleep and hope my wife is up to giving me the heimlich manouver if I wake up choking again. (She hates it when that happens).