I like routines as much as the next autist. Which is to say I like them quite a lot. But I don’t care for being on autopilot as I go through my day.
Being present feels better than disassociating from the moment. I can’t help but feel like running a subroutine with little attention is a bit like falling away from myself.
I was in a hyperbaric chamber oxygen treatment session today and found myself struggling to breathe. The chamber I am using has an oxygen concentrator which is meant to flow at 100%. But I could barely feel anything in the tubes and found myself taking the mask off to get a breath. The ambient air for comparison is 21%.
Had I been on autopilot maybe I wouldn’t have noticed. I think there was an issue with the valves in the chamber but the technicians didn’t seem to take my explanations particularly seriously.
They kept insisting that it automatically adjusted to my breathing. I kept trying to increase the flow using different breathing techniques like Wim Hoff and square breathing but nothing seemed to work.
I still feel off. Like I’ve got altitude sickness or pneumonia. I can’t catch my breath. If anyone knows anything about HPOTech I’d love to know if it being at 23% means anything so I can figure out if there is a valve issue or if that was just it being at the end of the session.
