Breathing machines

Yesterday at the ALS Clinic, Wendy seemed to adjust easily and quickly to relaxing and allowing a machine to do the breathing for her. The machine has a name and an acronym but it's simplest when talking about it to the uninitiated just to call it "the machine." We brought the machine home with us, and have found that it's not quite as easy to do it on our own as it was in the clinic with the respiratory technician, an excellent teacher and mentor, to guide us through the process. Last night when we ought to have set it up and used it, we were both tired out after a long afternoon learning all the ins and outs of the machine. So we put it off until today. This morning, I set it all up ready and this afternoon she tried it out for the first time. Almost every day she has an afternoon sleep (euphemistically called a 'nap' although it usually lasts up to a couple of hours). She relaxed and used the face mask and breathing machine quite well, but was unable to fall asleep. So this evening she was more than usually tired, too tired to let me fit the face mask in place and entrust her breathing to the machine. So we wimped out, and now, almost an hour before her usual bedtime, she is deeply asleep without it. We will try again tomorrow. It is basically quite a simple device, certainly nothing to deter us from mastering the technique of using it. I'm confident we will have it doing exactly what we want it to do in another day or two.