May 23, 2006

Sleep Apnea and Congestive Heart Failure

Denise Hartman is a web designer in Michigan. I would never have known that if I hadn’t blogged for SeniorWeblogs last year.

Yesterday, I received an unsolicited email from her. The email ended up in my bulk folder and was nearly deleted as spam. It would have been IF the subject line hadn’t been so carefully crafted to appeal to me.

Denise lost her mother last month. Her mother died from congestive heart failure, recovery impeded by a condition known as sleep apnea.

She wrote to me in response to the following blog entry:

Friday, November 04, 2005
Sleep Apnea Comments? Please!...
Posted at 7:44 AM
Category: Health
The doctors have told me I have obstructive sleep apnea and that I'm not getting enough oxygen because of it. My husband has told me I stop breathing when I'm sleeping. Week before last while in Nashville with my son he said "Mom, do you know you stop breathing, and then cough, and then start breathing again when you're sleeping?". I get it! Nothing new here. I was born with allergies.

I have great respect for my doctor, which is why as we travel around Ohio while hubby builds Walgreen’s stores, I continue to drive to Troy to see the same one. I still see the same allergist/surgeon this doctor recommended. For a couple of weeks I saw a local doctor—only for allergy shots—with the serum provided by the Troy allergist. My arm hurt for a week after the shots and I had welts and bruising. I’m no longer trusting her to give me the shots. It IS about trust.

And now, this most trusted and respected doctor has informed me that if I don’t use the C-PAP breathing machine (note that it only blows room air, not oxygen) I not only may, but probably will, be facing congestive heart failure. He explained all of this thoroughly on Wednesday, stressing that a lack of oxygen doesn’t do much damage to the lungs, but affects the heart in terrible ways.

Still, I can't make myself believe I will sleep any better by wearing a fighter pilot's mask that shoves air in my face, while trying to sleep on my stomach--which is the only way I can sleep. And I’ve been told (duh!) it is the lack of sleep that makes me feel tired all the time. Oy!

IF ANY OF YOU DEAR READERS have sleep apnea and/or use a breathing machine at night, please leave a comment here or contact me at Linda@lindajhutchinson.com and let me know if you think it helps or not.. Obviously, my decision on this issue could mean the difference between life and death.

This is what Denise wrote in her email:

Linda,

I read your health blog and thought you would be interested in my story. You requested information on your site. I am a designer living in Michigan. I just went through the experience with my mother in Florida about a month ago. It disturbs me that the health care professionals at the hospital she was in were not aware of the link between sleep apnea in congestive heart failure patients. After my mother's death I found many articles online stating that this was a problem, that 50% of congestive heart failure patients have sleep apnea, but only 5% are ever diagnosed or treated for it and many doctors think that CPAP lowers the morbidity rate in CHF patients.

I am trying to get the info out, for the next person who has this problem.

I have created a web page chronicling the events of her death. I did this because I watched her die and it seemed to me that undiagnosed and untreated central sleep apnea played a role. Please visit -- Denise's Sleep Apnea Site for the whole story.

Thanks,
Denise

No, Denise. Thank you! This was a wake-up call for me and I am re-considering my stance on that breathing machine only because you took the time to contact me, a complete stranger. I have a doctor’s appointment today.

May 14, 2006

My "Single" Son Now Blogs!

My son, the father of two of my grandsons, has decided it's time to be online. Take a look at JT's New Blog!

He got a new Harley motorcycle last week. I've been thinking about changing my website photo...



Here's the one I've been using...



What do you think?

May 13, 2006

Welcome E.D. Easley to the Internet!

How do you drag one snarky Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and editor, one with decades of old-school marketing experience, into today's Internet-ruled world? You ambush him!

That's what Audrey Shaffer, Renee' Barnes, and I did at last week's International Chat at The Writer's Chatroom.

Why? Because we like him. That, and he's a decent writer.

Check out Ed's new online presence at E.D. Easley's World! (You'll discover why he's a likeable guy--eventually.)

May 11, 2006

Set Up Your Own RSS Feed to This Blog!

The topic at The Writer's Chatroom last night, moderated by our own Audrey Shaffer, was "Blogs and RSS feeds".

Links for setting up your very own blogs and RSS Readers are at The Writer's Chatroom Blog.

Granted it was very late here in Ohio when the chat was over and I presumed to know what I was doing when I set up my RSS feed, and I've been fighting an ear infection, and hubby was milling about rather than sleeping peacefully, and my mind was on setting up our financial records... I really hosed it up.

So now there are funny characters showing up everywhere an apostrophe or a hyphen should be. And I don't yet know how to fix it, so please bear with me.

I've asked the kind folks at blogger.com for their assistance. As usual, they've already wasted their time and mine by sending me the usual "cookie-cutter" response rather than looking at the real problem. I do so wish IT folks in call centers would throw away the scripts and actually look at the problem. End of rant for now.

But...if you would like to set up an RSS feed on your computer so you can receive updates as they happen, the easiest one to use (so I've been told) is www.rssreader.com.

Set up your RSS reader on your computer, following their directions.

The feeds to this blog and my website blog, and of course, The Review Hutch are:

http://www.lindajhutchinson.blogspot.com./atom.xml and http://lindajhutchinson.tripod.com/blog/rss.xml
http://www.reviewhutch.blogspot.com./atom.xml

And drop me a note to let me know you're much smarter than I am. :)

May 03, 2006

To Write For Free--or Not

This article may be published freely so long as the complete author bio box is included. This article is copyrighted 2006 by author.

TO WRITE FOR FREE—OR NOT
by Linda J. Hutchinson

Word count: 495

Put a bunch of writers in a room, virtual or real, and it won’t be long before at least two heated discussions ensue, typically: traditional publishing vs self-publishing, and whether or not to write for free.

I like to be paid for my work. I imagine that you do, too. There are times, however, when writing for free can have huge paybacks, whether that was the intended purpose or not.

Consider this:

You have a favorite charity. They need a letter written for the annual fundraiser. You volunteer to write it. Even though your name may not go on the bottom of the letter, the committee knows who wrote it and your name will go on their list of volunteers—which does go out to the masses on a regular basis. The committee is usually made up of local business people who may hire you to write copy for their sales campaigns. You’ve just gotten your foot in the door with them. Or, if they can’t hire you, they just might float your name around the lunch table to their friends who can. Or, the charity itself may hire you for upcoming fundraising campaigns.

You are an aspiring writer. You know you could be successful but you have no published clips. You can’t get any published clips because you have none. We’ve all been there. Consider writing an article for one of the many free article mills on the net. The first one I put out there a couple of years ago is still being picked up and re-published! Lately it’s been flying under the CarFax banner. Voila! Your first clip! Here’s a short list to try:


www.articlecity.com
www.goarticles.com
www.web-source.net
www.isnare.com
www.ezinearticles.com
www.articlesfactory.com


You have a product you’d like to test market. That product could be copywriting, or letters from Santa, or a school play. Target your market with your article and put it out there using the free article services. Track the responses.

Blogging: Either you love to blog, hate to blog, or just don’t get what all the fuss is about, but blogging is here to stay. It is the newest form of free expression and it is everywhere! Corporate America “gets” it and has hired bloggers to push their products.

Those search engine ‘crawlers' and ‘bots’ pick up comments in blogs quickly, so be careful what you say. (Some immodest souls have lost corporate jobs due to their rants in blogs.) And by all means, leave a courteous comment on someone’s blog! With your name and website address, of course.

Writing for your own website can be the most satisfying of all the writing you will do for free. At least it will be for free in the beginning. After you’ve shown what you can do with your website, you can then get paid to write all that copy for someone else’s website!

It’s all called marketing. Unfortunately, sometimes as writers, we must do it for free. Sometimes. Pick your times carefully.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linda J. Hutchinson is a multi-published freelance writer and photojournalist who lives in TN and OH. Her articles and features have appeared in magazines, trade journals, newspapers, newsletters, on websites and in e-zines. Her first novel is in process. http://www.lindajhutchinson.com