I Gotta Change My Face

A few months ago, I started having a hard time breathing. My doctor thought I had bronchitis, so she gave me drugs. A month later, the drugs didn't work, the inhaler's didn't work and I was still miserable. She finally decided that I had developed asthma and she thought it was from sleep apnea. So she sent me to a sleep clinic.

Well, at the sleep clinic they tried me on a cpap machine, that forces air down your windpipe all night, and found out some stuff about me.

I've always been a big snorer, even as a kid. So was my dad. Just figured it ran in the family.

But at the sleep clinic, they let you sleep and monitor you over night. The doctor told me today that if you quit breathing 30 times an hour or more while you are sleeping, or TRYING to sleep in my case, it's a big deal. You need to be treated for apnea.

I quit breathing 148 times an HOUR during the test! More than twice a minute. No wonder I wasn't getting any rest.

So now I have a cpap machine, and it's helping. I've been using it for two weeks. But it's not doing it's full job. The mask I have to wear isn't getting a good seal around my face. It's leaking, so I'm not getting the full benefit from it. Because I have hair on my face. Now I have to shave it.

I've had hair on my face as long as I can remember. I don't know what to do? What to take off and what to leave on.

Deb has never complained about HOW I wore my facial hair. As long as it didn't scratch her... um, SKIN.

I told my son about this tonight and he laughed. He said, "I've NEVER seen you without hair on your face". And he might be right.

In the past, I've had a full beard, but I don't want that any more. My hair is SO curly that it takes CONSTANT trimming and maintenance to keep it from growing back into my skin and being a pain in the ass.

I've almost always had, at least a mustache since the 80's. For a while in the 90's while doing undercover dope work once in a while, I had, "The Fu". But looking at a picture on my computer table of our first trip to Mexico in 1999 with my buddy, Di and her boyfriend at the time, it was MUCH darker than it is now.

For quite a few years now, I've had this, "Colonel Custer" thing going on, and I like it. But it's got to go so I can breath at night.

I'm thinking I might try to trim it down in the morning, close enough and high enough that the mask will fit on my face. But if that doesn't work, I'm going to go back to the, Joe Namath, Fu Manchu, "stash".

I like to think that it makes me look a little dangerous. Or crazy. Which is the same thing.

Either way, I'm going to look different by tomorrow afternoon than I do now. And I had no intention of changing my appearance for the rest of my life.

Sometimes, life doesn't go the way you planned. But getting older is always better than the alternative.

And I changed the picture on the profile to one from last summer, so you'll know what I'm talking about with the beard. That's me, Comedian Extrodinare, Lisa Landry, and Deb at Lisa's taping of her newest DVD in Denver last summer. I'll post a new picture next week when I decide what to do with the mess on my face.