Wednesday

Finally got to the sleep apnea doc wednesday. I was tired, my BP was abnormal, it was 3:00, the time of day I'm at my worst.

I listed my problems against his questionaire... and I could see his face clouding up. We talked about my always irregular sleep pattern, the ongoing tiredness, the ADD, my noise problem with the machine, the other stuff weighing me down. He asked some interesting questions, and surprised the hell out of me with two of them. Most of the advice I've got from the internet has been basically fixed. go to bed at X, get up at y, don't nap, etc., etc. I've been trying to sleep at 11, and get up at 7 now for months. It doesn't work. The doc said it was important to identify my natural sleep/wake pattern, first. It is tied to the sun cycle, but in some people it's delayed or retarded from sunrise to sunset.

I've only woken up refreshed a few times in years. Hmm. When? How? "What's my natural pattern now?" Good questions, I said. "OK, lets relax the medical regime, go off the machine for a while, and find out."

So wednesday I ditched the ambien, waited for myself to feel sleepy, curled up on my side in the quietest room in the house at midnight - and slept 4 1/2 hours in one burst - and did my usual doze/sleep routine til about 7 and then lay there til 9. With a waking body temp of 95.4 degrees... by the time I felt able to move. I really have to research the neurofeedback idea - my energy level is definately tied to my body temp... if I can heat myself up in the morning I feel better. Exercise is good, hot showers are good - it's making that first MOVE out of bed that's the hard part. I have 2 alarms, 2 lights on timers, and my stereo rigged to play really loud - all to get me out of bed...

The doc floored me with his next question. "If these sort of hours weren't your normal sleeping pattern in the first place - why'd you change them?"

My answer surprised me with its intensity: "because I wanted to get married - have kids - have a normal life." - my eyes clouded up, and I got teary, even. I was tired, my emotions were close to the surface.

The doc vanished for a while, then came back with a prescription - talk to your shrink about this - and we agreed to meet again in 4-6 weeks.

Fugued off thursday

This really bothered me. I blogged about other stuff in the morning while I thought about it. At noon I spent 30 minutes trying to write code. I did a little mental jujitsu - it's C that hurts most - so I pulled out perl and tried to write a cgi script. Behind my eyeballs - I could see what I wanted - but on the screen - a few lines emitted and... brain crash. But, this time, lacking distractions and having given myself a time limit (Another ADD trick), I did that man CGI thing, and got past that crash... kept going - then had a hard mental crash about 20 minutes in. I noticed I was breathing irregularly, and put my head down on the desk for a while and just focused on that. Then took my temp. 95.1F.

This body temp thing I'm tracking is interesting... I got up, and did jumping jacks for 10 minutes - body temp of 97.3. Sat down - and powered through a few more lines. In 10 minutes - I got something that basically worked (well, at least one bug in it) and a bunch of ideas for what to do next... features, tools.... My pulse slowed, my body temp dropped, and I called it quits at 40 minutes.

I ran in place for 10 minutes - it was amazing how clear my mind felt, how easy it was to stay on track exercising.

I went and sorted my CD collection. Yep. The whole thing. I moved it all into a single black portable container - started wondering - where'd all my happy music go? Where's the dixyland, Professor longhair, Beach Boys? Hell, where's all the testosterone driven - drive fast die young stay pretty - music? No Blondie? What happened to you, mike? where's the Bill Cosby/Robin Williams? Where's the surf music? The techno? The Rock in roll? No Peter Gabriel? No Genesis? No Zepplin? Yeesh.

No wonder you've lumping along for a couple years with your pulse barely beating above 60.

I got rid of some whiny chick singers: Jewel and Kate Wolf, a bunch of Christine Lavin records, and thought seriously about decimating the Joni Mitchel collection - and put them in my errand box for trade in.

More later...


  ¶ 10:48 AM