Oh CRAP

I haven't posted about the sleep apnea thing for quite a while. No, I haven't gotten used to the Damn Machine--in fact just the opposite. After about 5 months of using it, my breathing patterns seem to have been significantly retrained, and I haven't used it since about March. Yeah, I love being able to sleep on my stomach again.

But recently, I've been noticing a tendency to be tired again. It creeps up on one, this lack of sleep, and suddenly I heard myself saying something I hadn't said for months. "Gosh, I'm tired!" (I try not to swear in front of the kidlets.)

So I waited for a night Captain Sweetie was away on business travel, and reattached the Damn Machine for the night. God I had forgotten how it makes me feel like an elephant--the long air tube coming off the front of my face and getting tangled up as I sleep. Did the mask used to leak like this? Air is streaming into my left eye, and across my nose. This must mean readjustment. Fine, so I get the air to stop escaping. . .and now I can feel the mask material searing into my skin, so I have to loosen it and the air is escaping again. . .

It was a long night. For the three hours I actually managed to keep the Damn Thing on.

You know the real tragedy? After one night--ONE NIGHT--and not even an entire night with that Damn Machine, what do I get.

Insomnia.

Killer insomnia. The kind where you toss and turn and wake up your bed partner (who falls asleep again in under 0.075 seconds, so he doesn't remember it, but he doesn't hear the scary noises he makes when he is startled from sleep). The kind of killer insomnia where you (and by you, I mean "me") go downstairs and watch the sun come up before feeling the least bit sleepy.

Four hours of sleep for a number of nights in a row isn't good for me. Know how I can tell? Because I can't even remember how many nights it has been.

But there is a silver lining! When I have insomnia, I don't have to wear the Damn Machine!

More CRAP

I seem to be getting used to the CRAP machine, as I'm sleeping through the night, mostly, with it on, and I mostly am waking up after about 8 1/2 hours of sleep. I'm also noticing that I wake up more quickly--more of a single awakening, and less of a return to the surface after a deep dive.

They told me to expect that my dreams would be more vivid once I started using the machine, and I have to tell you that they were pretty darn vivid anyway.

Just the other night, I had a dream that featured both Henry Kissinger and Kevin Federline. It contained this bizarre statement from Kissinger: "Been there, done that, ate the Red Hots."

I have no idea what that means.

Morning Report

For those of you following the CRAP machine drama, here is a (mercifully brief) update. I fell asleep last night without the machine. Probably due to too much Halloween excitement, y'all.

Anyway, Mr. Sweetie reports that this morning, for an hour, there was less snoring (or softer snoring, or something--some improvement anyway) and that at no time did I stop breathing!

Okay, even as I type that out, it doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment--I breathed! But it's a far cry from stopping about once per minute, which I was doing as of June.

So maybe, just maybe, the CRAP machine is actually helping.

And with the newest (my third!) mask, Mr. Sweetie says I look like a fighter pilot. Just call me "Top Gun" ma'am.

More on Sleep

I promise I'll be brief.

I've now spent 3 nights with the new mask on the CRAP machine. And it might be working. I was even able to sleep on my stomach!

Sure, it doesn't sound like much, but remember? When you were pregnant? (All non-pregnant people are excused from this exercise.) And as the baby started getting bigger, and you still tried to sleep on your stomach, but there was the hard bump that you just couldn't get comfortable around? And as the third trimester hit, you could only sleep on your side, and mostly only the left side at that? And then remember after the baby was born, and you rolled over the first night onto your stomach?

Like that. Pure, decadent, heavenly bliss.

Finally?

Saw my Sleep Doctor yesterday. (Doesn't that sound like something associated with a Sleep Number Bed? Or a mattress retailer or something?) Actually, he's probably a pulmonologist or something, since the medical nature of sleep apnea is about respiratory efficiency, and the health effects associated with chronic lack of oxygen.)

Anyway. I saw my doc yesterday to talk about how the sleep thing is going. I'm now on a fixed volume machine, which only shows how many hours it's been on--no detail. So the purpose of the appointment is to see if there was anything majorly wrong, I guess, since there didn't seem to be a lot else he could do at this point.

Every time I go in, I have to fill out a little questionnaire, about how likely I am to fall asleep in different situations: sitting in a car for an hour, reading a book, stopped at a stoplight. Stuff like that. And even though I'm not entirely sure I'm feeling a whole lot better, apparently my responses to those questions show improvement.

Well, sure, if you're going to go and actually LISTEN to what I SAY--what kind of evidence is that? Evaluating data over time. Examining subjective responses to a standard set of questions. That's SCIENTIFIC METHOD, that is. That's so unfair, because I can't just complain!

Well, actually, I can complain. If you can't complain, you're just not thinking hard enough, right? I am still (subjectively) not sleeping well because my current scuba sleep mask is NOT meant for side and stomach sleepers. Which I am. And when you have a tube riding on your upper lip, with small nozzles that rest against your nostrils, and an air tube that comes out the side of that same tube--and then you roll onto your side. . .you get a weird pressure on your nose, which kind of hurts, and also feels like maybe you aren't breathing.

Do I wake up refreshed? Well, I wake up with my neck muscles all tensed so that I can keep the mask from pushing my nose all over my face, which is hardly restful. It's almost even odds as to which is the worse--fighting the mask all night, or apnea.

So, I talked to (yet another) technician and told her my difficulties. Because the first one I had burned my skin. So this one pushes my nose around my face all night. Can you get cauliflower nose? So, after a couple of false starts, she gave me a third mask to try.

Structurally, it's the same as the first one, but made of a different material where it touches the skin. I wore it last night, and you know what? It was noticeably better. There was a short period where I thought it might cause the same problem with my skin, but then it stopped. And I slept all night! And I had dreams about. . .grocery shopping!

Okay, the dreams need work. But now there is guarded optimism about whether this might work.

(You know how optimism needs to be guarded. Otherwise the fans all rush in, trying to get autographs, and the paparazzi get completely unruly.)

More Musings on Health and Sleep

Okay, I lied. It's not just the fact that I've lost six pounds that keeps me going. It's that, when you think about it, needing 12 hours of sleep a day makes life...well...boring.

I mean, the sleep is great, and it feels good to feel good and not like I'm swimming through oatmeal while wearing cement underwear or anything. But really, if one needs 12 hours of sleep out of every 24, that leaves the remaining 12 to be:

Boring.

Really boring.

Really really mind-numbingly, soul harrowingly boring.

Because, squeezing in 12 hours of sleep where one can means sleeping at night plus sleeping while the rest of the family is off at work, or school, or athletics, or whatever. Which means that, for instance today, I had only two hours and 40 minutes before I had to pick up the kids from after school sports practice. In that two hours and 40 minutes I had the following list of exciting activities that took up the entire time:

1. Walk the dog.
2. Make lunch.
3. Pick up a prescription from the doctor's office.
4. Fill said prescription.
5. Go to the grocery store.

And that was it: that was the full extent of my free time today. Because once one picks up the kids, it's time to make dinner, and feed the dog, and let the dog out and then back in, and check homework, and set a good example and keep the house quiet during homework time, and empty the dishwasher and clean the kitchen and run the laundry. . .

. . .and all the boring minutae of daily life. Because some things just have to be done when they have to be done, and all the fun stuff and the free time and the stuff I want to do just to be me? That has to wait.

Sure, there are probably lots and lots of people who are organized, and high energy, and have their kids routine's regimented and who have the ability to either multi-task, or delegate, or simply to switch gears rapidly in order to take profitable advantage of the small bits of time that accumulate between the chores. And I wish I could do this. I really do. But so far, after a few decades of trying, I'm beginning to suspect that I have to concede defeat.

Sure, while the sweet potatoes are cooking, and while the turkey is broiling, I managed to post here, which is the sort of thing that keeps everything from being completely hopeless. But there is so much else I want to be able to go and do, and I could do it--

--except for this sleeping thing. Because I can't just cut back on my sleep to gain the extra time.
Not getting enough sleep, for me, means that everything I have to do is just that much harder, and takes just that much longer, and is just that much more boring and depressing, and I don't get any more done anyway.

It isn't fair, and it isn't nice, and it's why it feels like what I am fighting for is my life. Not merely my continued existence, but for all the things that make life worth living and not just the daily grind.

So, that is why I was so incredibly disheartened with all the delay in this condition getting improved: I'm fighting for Life.

In Which I Wallow In Self Pity

Don't say you haven't been warned. This is a pity party here, and since it's my party, I'll cry if I want to.

Yup, that's right--we're going to be talking CPAP again.

Previously, we learned that the machine I had was not, in fact, working at all, and was exchanged (after FAR too long) for one that actually varied its air pressure. Not willing to be made a chump in the same way AGAIN, I took the new Damn Machine into be checked after about 10 days.

Yes, the thing was working. Yes, it was recording data. In fact, the data was so clear that the technician grabbed the doctor out of his discussion of fantasy football and showed him the data. And he decided that it would work to switch to a non-variable setting machine. The fixed setting would be 13, which coincidentally? was exactly half way through the range of variable settings I had before.

Not to bemoan lost opportunities, or anything, BUT--the first doctor who read the results of my sleep study IN JUNE had recommended a fixed pressure of 12, which would have avoided all these months of non-data collecting, and non-variable variable pressure, and would have gotten me to almost the exact place I am now after THREE DAMN MONTHS.

This is where it is a good thing that the antidepressants work, or we'd be looking at some serious scar tissue right now, and that makes wearing a watch so irritating.

Anyway, things should be looking up now, right. Because:

1. I'm home with a new machine that is supposed to provide the exact right level of air pressure for me.
   
2. We got a cold front, so the nights are cool and comfortable--perfect sleeping weather.
3. Last night was the first night I felt that I was actually sleeping without fighting the mask and trying to get comfortable.

So good, right? Should be a good night's sleep, and the start of feeling better. I woke up, got the kids to school, and came back and went back to bed, as I wasn't really finished with the job of rest. To be a Do-Bee, I even put the Damn Mask back on and napped with it, in the hopes that unobstructed sleep would mean actually waking up refreshed after a reasonable amount of time.

When I did wake up, naturally, the dog bounded over, greeting my wakefullness a bit more frantically than usual. Because it was bloody 1:50 in the afternoon! Poor animal's bladder was knocking, because I managed to sleep over twelve hours before I woke up.

I hope that is just because I am still sleep deprived, because 12 hours of sleep is hard to fit in, and not any improvement over what I had before all this nonsense. It's just not very encouraging at all. I mean, why should I struggle with the Damn Machine and everything just to need as much sleep as I needed before? I can only hope that as time goes on, I need less sleep, and that the sleep is more restful for me, and that it reverses all the ill health effects that sleep deprivation can cause. Like weight gain, risk of stroke, heart diseases, etc.

The only entry over on the plus side of the entry at this point, is that I have managed to lose 6 pounds. Is it related? It's too early to tell, but it's enough to keep me going for now.