We Did What?
1 - Two days ago we finally bought a new car. A new 'new' car. A first in our 36 year marriage. In the States we always bought used cars from dealerships with factory warranty that just old enough to have depreciated out.
Here? Turns out buying used even from a dealership is a crap shoot. No consumer protections at all. You roll it off the lot it's your problem. It's like the States were before Ralph Nader came along and spearheaded the "Lemon Laws".
We bought a cobalt blue Nissan Kicks, a small little crossover with twice the gas millage of our old Honda CRV. Bought right off the showroom floor. We'll be able to pick it up on Friday from our salesman Stalin. Yes, our salesman was named after a Russian dictator, hope it's not a bad omen.
The not so good stuff. Costa Rica, in their infinite weird wisdom, decided to let the contract with the company running the vehicle inspection services to, Ritive, lapse without a plan forward. So now there's no inspection at all, not even a sticker for the new car. The government is taking bids but I'm suspicious that they'll have this done in a timely fashion. I'm thinking it will be a year or more before they finalize and put something in place.
Back in January the government of Costa Rica was hacked, and as a result most of the day to day business with them is affected, like registering the car with the national database.
Somehow I am not surprised. Part of the culture here is Tico Time, meaning slow as a sloth on many things. Costa Rica is a second world country struggling to achieve first world status while having some things be very third world. This cultural thing is what many gringos cannot adjust to here. They come thinking everything is like the U.S.A. and quickly get disabused of that notion.
Anyway, Friday will be here tomorrow and we can stop driving that disgusting car we've been storing.
2 - The other crazy thing I did was I bucked my doctors at UVA. The last time I had sleep labs they claimed my pressure number for my cpap machine needed to be much, much lower. That my need had miraculously been lowered. After over twenty years on the high pressure number they lowered it by half. Even if I have generalized sleep apnea where the nerve that sends the signal to breathe is messed up, not the obstructive type. I have protested to them that the number is wrong any number of times only to be told it is not because I was tested.
Woke up yesterday morning with slight symptoms of a TIA. I'm afraid of another TIA or stroke so it was off to the clinic for a CT scan and evaluation. Not a TIA, but I did have some concerning symptoms of vision problems and nerve tingling. Told to get the sleep numbers checked again to make absolutely sure the number was right on the machine.
Called the sleep clinic in the States with one eye on the costs of a flight back asap for a retest. They sighed and finally agreed to retest me, telling me I had to get my primary care to refer me to the pulmo, and the pulmo would have to sign off on the sleep lab. They are also three months booked. In other words one big expensive long term hassle. So I did what we do here, I McGuyvered it.
Found a YouTube video that explained how to reset the pressure on my particular bipap/cpap machine and I reset it to the old setting I was on over twenty years.
Guess what? I woke up this morning clear headed, able to see, without pain and energetic for the first time since pre pandemic. I clearly need the higher pressure. They screwed up, just like I've been trying to tell them since the testing. No one's pressure goes down with generalized sleep apnea. I wonder if this is the thing that caused my two strokes. I hope it prevents any more.
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