vi·ti·ate

I'll Huff and I'll Puff...

With this ‘blog-a-day’ challenge, I might’ve actually bitten off more than I can chew. It’s only day one and my mind isn’t exactly full of interesting ideas to write about. I’m also not half as much of a miserable get as I used to be, so I can’t even vent and moan about whatever happened to be irking me at that point in time. So – what to do? Be more interesting? Well, I’m working on that, but such cosmic shifts take time.

Actually – yes! Something did irk me today. This new TV advert for The Guardian. Have a click and have a watch:

Insightful? Thought-provoking? Refreshing? Well, no, not really. Interesting? Definitely.

I’m sure I won’t be the first, or the last, to draw parallels between the styling, tone and dark humour of the advert and Charlie Brooker’s wildly successful (and wildly excellent) trio of imperfect-future dramas; Black Mirror. After all, its not a difficult mental leap to make, what with the advert having its TV debut in an ad-break between Brooker-and-co’s occasionally hilarious and more-frequently quite cutting 10 O’Clock Live on Wednesday. This is prime-time viewing for the modern, edgy, Guardianista.

The ad paints the picture that The Guardian provides an ‘open’ news platform. A platform part-authored by the reader themselves. Where good old investigative journalism digs to the heart of the matter, and doesn’t just skim the surface with what appears to be the cut-and-dried initial facts. Mix in a little reader-input – Tweets and article comments, and hey, the old Graniuad is a shining bastion of truth and light in our brave new-media world.

Left-leaning thinkers reach for The Guardian and its coverage (both in-print and online) because there is no other reasonable leftist alternative. There’s a plethora of rightist print-media – all of the ragtops, The Times and the Express – and of course, the proverbial jewel in the right-wing crown, The Daily Mail. These papers, these media sources, may all lean in the same general manner, but their coverage of things sometimes couldn’t be more different – giving the reader a smorgasbord of views on any given subject. Because there’s no other populist leftist media, The Guardian leans so heavily to the left it almost becomes a parody of itself at times.

As I said in a Tweet yesterday;

Dear @guardian, Skewing a story with a liberal, leftist bent is no more ‘open’ than the #dailymail skewing it to the right. #threelittlepigs

Excessive Verbal Diarrhoea

My Australiasian Yammerite cousin, Steve, has been encouraging people to write a blog entry every day in March.

So, I’m going to give it a whirl. Why not? It’s not like we’ve not been here before! I’m three years older (wiser? jury’s out on that one) now, so we’ll see what nonsense I can come up with this time.

Living life fast asleep and failing

In September last year, I was diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnoea.

I had long suspected I had the condition, but every time I brought the subject up with my (then) GP, it was met with raised eyebrows and thin suggestions of hypochondria – usually coupled with a “Get to the gym”, “lose weight” and “stay positive” mantra. I knew something wasn’t right though, inside. When – in summer last year – I started falling asleep at work, at dinner and – indeed – whilst driving – something had to give. This was not normal.

I’m sure that the Wikipedia article can explain the condition far better than I can – but to provide a summation: in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea (OSA), a sufferer ceases breathing several times during sleep, due to tissue inside the throat ‘collapsing’ (or the muscles inside relaxing) and closing the airway between the nose & mouth and the windpipe. When this happens, this is called an Apnoea. These can last any period from a few seconds to a minute or more. As you are receiving no oxygen, your blood-oxygen saturation levels drop. When these levels drop, your brain signals your muscles in the neck to contract – thus re-opening the airway, and allowing you to breathe again. The trouble with this is that this prevents an OSA sufferer from ever entering true deep, REM, sleep.

Sleep Apnoea robs you. Slowly, and without you really noticing. By my estimation, my condition probably started around 6-7 years ago. I pinpoint this timeperiod because it roughly tallies with the last time that I actually felt happy and normal. It marks the start of the decline. My personality slowly started to shift – I went from being happy, laid-back and confident, to insular, reluctant and miserable. I would wake up feeling tired, and would have a dry, scratchy throat. I began to suffer with atrocious heartburn and acid-reflux. My ex-wife would complain at my increasing ‘laziness’ – which was true, I’d never get anything done – I’d always feel too tired. This feeling gradually – slowly-but-surely – crept on and got worse and worse. I was also putting on weight at an alarming rate – yet I wasn’t eating anything particularly bad. Fast forward to last year.

I was struggling to get out of bed in the morning to get to work. Not because I didn’t want to go – but because I literally couldn’t drag myself out of bed. I would be exhausted. Consequently, I would struggle to get to work on time. Because I was so tired, I would drink endless energy drinks. These might get me through the day, but inevitably I would crash at some point. I would fall asleep in the toilet cubicles at the office. I was finding it hard to concentrate on work. I’d have to stay late to make up the time I didn’t use in the morning. I would be in the office until 10, 11, midnight or later. I would have to mentally plan simple tasks – even, towards the end, having to talk myself through things; partly to keep me alert and partly to ensure I did things correctly. It was absurd. My heartburn by this time was incredible – I could hardly eat anything without it causing pain or vomiting. I had stomach cramps all the time and the less said about the toilet, the better. I was a walking zombie trapped in a vicious circle. I went to my GP a final time and demanded a referral to the Sleep Clinic at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.

This time, my GP ceded.

Apnoea levels are measured against the “Apnoea-Hypopnoea Index”. A score of 0-5 is normal. 5-15 is mild, 15-30 is moderate and >30 is severe. My score came back as 91…

My average sleeping blood-oxygen saturation level – the amount of oxygen in my blood – was 83%. A normal, healthy human being would have a level between 95-100%.

The sleep specialist dealing with me called me a “Poster Child for Sleep Apnoea” and – very matter of factly – “Someone’s PhD”. She expressed her astonishment that I had been both holding down a regular job and that I was driving regularly – the figures I’d posted were typically only seen in very rare cases, where people are so stricken with OSA that they’re completely housebound and dependent on external aid. I was pleased that – finally – someone had recognized that something was wrong with me, but knowing that my only treatment would be a CPAP machine and a face mask – a machine which provides air pressure into the mouth and throat, forcing the airway open whilst I slept – I was hugely skeptical.

Fast forward again to now. I’ve been on the mask now for six months or so. Wow. Did I really live like that? Really? It sounds so ridiculous. I keep reading it back and I’m amazed that this person was me. I totally changed. Frightening. I am sure, completely sure, that if I hadn’t gotten diagnosed & treated I would have gone crazy by now. Crazy or dead. One or the other.

Now I feel like I’m waking up into a normality. Life seems brighter. Colours are more vivid. Food tastes good again. I’m losing weight. Everything which was broken before is slowly fixing. I feel better. Long may it reign!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends

So much to tell, so little time! It has been long. Too long.

So – changes – well; firstly – the domain name. Vitiate.org. This domain name came about when I signed up for a (virtually) free web-hosting account with some hosting company called ‘Dreamhost’ a year or so ago. Part of the deal was an equally free domain name. Never one to gaze into a gift horse’s mouth for too long, I eagerly snapped one up – and ‘vitiate’ just happened to be the shortest English dictionary word which had a corresponding com/net/org domain name available at the time. I have to admit, I had to look up the definition (its given at the top of this page) – and when I saw it, well – it was too delicious to not buy.

Anyhow, that domain (and indeed the hosting account) sat dormant and unused, and unloved. Such is the way with these things. It was only when the renewal came through a month or so ago when I actually decided to do something with it. And now – here we are.

Blog looks nice? I think so. I’m using a ‘lightweight’ blogging engine called Chyrp. I like it quite a lot – much nicer than Wordpress, less intensive than Drupal, and even the code looks – dare I say it for a PHP project – vaguely manageable. You should probably check it out.

On a personal front – I’m now living in London (well, I’ve been here since July last year, really), and am working for Yammer – an awesome enterprise social media startup. More about them in another post.

A number of people have asked me to write more – and – frankly, it wouldn’t be me unless I tried to re-kickstart my blogging career every 12 months or so – so here we are. Like a smoker trying to kick the habit. Well, there we go.