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 Latest
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Diaryland |
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2002-11-19 - 5:08 p.m. Well, last night I got outta class early and what a relief that was. I didn't read the book and I didn't have my work. I was conking out while driving to class too. You should see me shouting at myself to stay up while driving. It's an ugly sight, but an amusing one at that. The drive back to the clinic wasn't too bad, I had Rob Swift and friends to keep me company, bumpin' to the "Sound Event." I got there a little early, late 8-ish. No one was at the front desk but I could hear talking, must be another patient. I read a pamphlet in the lobby about Apnea and Restless Leg Syndrome. I was overwhelmed that over 12 million people in the US alone suffered from RLS. Restless Leg Syndrome is a incurable thing where people can't sleep because they have this compulsion to kick and shit in their sleep. Apnea is also a big thing too. There was this checklist in the Apnea pamplet and I could almost check off every box. The nurse came in and greeted me and directed me to my room and said to get in my sleeping clothes. I had to fill out a questionaire. She had a list a movies I could choose from, most of which I've seen, all of which were corny, but I picked out Rat Race, I heard that was funny, sort of. I got into my old High School Gym shorts and a white tee. I waited for a good 20 minutes for her to set up the other patient for sleep, then she came for me. I was hooked up to a sleep monitoring machine, ALICE 4 is what it said on the side. I had 3 things on my chest, monitoring heart rate, two belts-for upper and lower respitory movement. I had two sensors on my calves for leg movement. I had a microphone for my snoring, I told her, "Hey, you wouldn't need a microphone." She soon figured out. Other things I had, was all this stuff glued to my head, she was drawing places on my head with wax pencil and I had one of those thingies around my ears and in my nose. Then I had this ET finger light monitoring my blood/oxygen levels. Suprisingly, I slept with all this stuff on. I felt like a six million dollar man or some shit. Once I was all strapped in I got into bed and watched Rat Race, well the first fifteen minutes of it, I conked the fuck out, seeing that the plot was so far-fetched and the gags sad and repetitive already. I awoke maybe 90 minutes into the movie afterwards with the nurse hovering over me, hooking extra tubes in me. "What's going on?" I said to her in my state. She was hooking me up to an oxygen tank. She told me "You weren't lying about your snoring." and she went on discussing on how bad my apnea was. She explained that a normal person has a blood oxygen level in the mid-90s, I don't know the units, I can't remember but she said the normal people were in the 90s and I was teetering in the 60s. Which was really bad and required me to get oxygen. She said there were periods of time where I stopped breathing for 30 seconds and more while sleeping. I can't even hold my breath underwater for 30 seconds. Mind you, this all was said to me, early in the night, I wasn't even asleep for more then an hour and a half and she was already calling the doctor. I told her, "I came to the right place I suppose." "I suppose you did." she said, as she turned on the oxygen tank. The rest of night was pretty uneventful, no dreams, the only funny thing is trying to go to the bathroom with all that shit on. It took me 20 minutes to figure out how to pull up my pants without ripping out my calf sensors. I was kinda worried with all this stuff on me, could I get electrocuted if I peed on one of the wires or if one dipped in the toilet somehow. Freaky. Anyways, I got Obstructive Apnea and Hypotnia or something. You look them up. Basically I have super low blood oxgyen levels (hypotnia sp?) and I stop breathing in my sleep (Apnea) and this is the reason why I can't concentrate or stay up while driving, or maybe even why I'm depressed and moody. I gotta get more tests done. I'm gonna be put on a CPAP, which is a machine that is hooked up to me while I sleep that keeps my airway open. It's a machine and I gotta wear some sorta mask or something. I might have to have oxygen too while I sleep, depending on the levels of improvement I get from the CPAP. Something like that, progress, sounds good. I'm gonna be the Darth Vader of sleep now. Hopefully, my Tyler Durden quasi-sleep will end soon. Wish me luck.
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