My latest obsession

I have spent most of my adult life waking up each morning and never quite feeling refreshed. It never seemed to be a problem until I hit my fifties. Then I decided to look into and this is what I found out..

I was a lousy sleeper which has left me obsessed with sleep!

Most normal people have five sleep cycles per night; each cycle usually lasts approx. ninety minutes.  If you wake up in the middle of a cycle, your brain has to go back to the beginning and starts the entire sleep cycle all over again.  The fewer interruptions to your sleep cycle the better your sleep quality. Makes sense, that if the sleep cycles finish that is good and a cycle is interrupted that is....not so good.

The importance here is the sleep "quality" and how efficiently you sleep and less about the” quantity” or the time you spend in bed; sleep doctors call this sleep efficiency.

When I went for my sleep tests they recorded a shift from deep to light non–rem sleep or from sleep to wakefulness some 200 times a night ( they are called arousals) most of these were breathing related episodes due to my sleep apnea. This put my sleep efficiency at  50%. 
Pretty bad!  

Any number above 85% and you can consider yourself a good sleeper!

I went on C-Pap and my nightly arousals went from 200 down to 4 and although I may wake up two times per night I am sleeping deeply when I am asleep!

 A good thing!

Here’s a neat way to calculate your sleep efficiency without having a sleep test which btw borders on torture and costs a fortune.

It will give you a general idea of how well you sleep by giving you the example of my numbers from the other night. 

Sleep Efficiency Calculator

Total Sleep Time = minutes  (630)

Minus time to fall asleep =  minutes  630-20=610

Total # 1 : minutes  610

Subtract = minutes awake during night

(1 toilet,20 mins., 2nd wake up 30 mins) = 50 mins. :

610-50=560

Total #2 minutes 560

Divide Total #1 (630)  into #2 (560) and you will arrive at your Sleep Efficiency.=  89%

This was a really good night for me and although I love my mask I do upon occasion struggle with wearing it but have been able to push thru any resistance.

It's a love hate relationship. 

How's your sleep life?

fa la la la la I am alive

Is it Christmas time already??
I was looking at this space today and realized that I hadn't posted since Thanksgiving!

Mr turkey lives in my woods, he survived Thanksgiving.

Sorry for the disappearing act my friends. Sometimes time just gets away from me; especially around the holiday season. I hope you know that regardless of my absence from this blog-and yours you all are never far from my thoughts.

Wondering what I've been doing? Yes-No...well I'm gonna give you the highlights.

I've gotten into the routine of getting up in the morning and making breakfast for the little one before school, everyone else is either, not home at school or work...I do have my limits about what time I get up!!. He's in fourth grade and loves french toast. (yes our family from Cyprus is still here)

We decorated the house for Christmas. Can you believe it took me and Bill three days to do the inside and outside of the house. Bins and bins of stuff, all with memories attached each and every piece. My step-daughter watched with wonder as we unpacked it all. Nutty? Probably but after the kids died those things even the small memories became important. I'm pretty pleased with myself (brag alert) that I even made real wreaths for my door and Mom's this year from our blue spruce trees, boxwood and pine cones.

I had my yearly dinner party for my girlfriends last week. I cooked , they came and then we drank wine and enjoyed each others company for a very nice evening. Since it was female only Bill took the grandsons out for dinner and a bit of shopping at Toys R Us.

We shopped for Christmas gifts a few days ago. We approach our shopping like a hungry dog approaches a bowl of food. Bill and I headed out just before lunch and hit the mall(s) and didn't get home until well after dinner time with a trunk full. I have a new appreciation for gift cards, that's what my Mom does in most cases. Anyway, tomorrow after a doctors appointment we'll finish a few odds and ends.

My husbands had fabulous insurance which is a benefit of his retirement and we thought it would be safe from any negative health care changes we've heard about in the news.  I received a notice that my blood pressure medication will no longer be covered as of January 1st. so I'm off to the doctor to explore my options.

I've been on my cpap for my newly diagnosed sleep apnea/hypopnea for a bit less than two weeks. I've read a lot of message boards about how hard it is to sleep with the masks and the machine buzzing and so forth. I'm hear to tell you it's all nonsense. From night one I've slept like I haven't slept in a long time.

We're having Christmas at our house this year. It will be fun with the kids here which as you know means Santa will be coming :) Then Bill, Mom and I are heading up to NY for my cousin Katie's wedding on the 28th out on Long Island. Then if that isn't enough traveling, the second week of January I'm off to do my guardian thing and visit my ward for her yearly care plan meeting. I'm looking forward to my meeting with the teachers from her day program, her group home coordinators and  her social worker so we can set her goals for this coming year. Then afterward her and I get to hang out, go shopping, share some meals and visit with her Mother in the nursing.

That's about it for now, folks.

One more thing! Have a  wonderful Christmas & Hanukkah.
May your holiday be filled with love, peace and joy.

The thing that takes my breath away……

Sleep, that's right! Sleep!

Did you ever get out of bed in the morning and feel unrested?

I spend a good eight hours in bed every night and I never feel rested, EVER.

My neurologist suspected something was going on.

I obviously wasn't sleeping well so he set up a test to find out why. 

A sleep study is what the test is called. 

I went and had a sleep study.

I lay in the bed looking at the back of my eyelids for what seemed like forever before sleep finally came. Who could blame me really! The room is nice but with the camera on the wall over the bed it was slightly icky. The wires that the sleep technician has attached with some glue like substance were hanging off the back of my head and I looked like a demented monster with a braid.  ( I actually have a picture of myself and it's so bad I won't even include it in this post for fear it will scare the readers away)

The results…

I have obstructive sleep apnea and hypoapnea as well. During my test my breathing either stopped fully or partially (for an average of 23 seconds or more) or slowed so much that my blood oxygen levels dropped dangerously low a lot.  

How many times could something like this happen in one night, you might wonder?

Basically I had 102 respiratory events (apneas hypoapnea’s) and 290 arousals which are basically abrupt changes in the level of sleep or from sleep to wakefulness.  It’s a wonder I’m not a walking zombie every day.

What does this mean to my health?

This  basically means I’m at risk for all sorts of health problems if this is left untreated, the biggies are heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, headaches, diabetes,  sudden death, obesity.

Crap!  

CPAP have you heard of it? It will probably help me with my problem more than cussing but saying it made me felt good anyway.  CPAP is an acronym for continuous positive airway pressure and is the recommended device for my condition. It’s basically a little machine with a mask that pushes air gently thru the nose and down the airway to keep the passages open.

Once the doctor and the insurance company sort out all the details I’ll have one more sleep study to get fitted for a face mask and for them to figure of the pressure of air required to stop my events during sleep.  But I’m hopeful that …

Before long I’ll be sleeping like a baby.

things that keep me up at night

I went to the doctor today for my Restless Leg Syndrome. For those of you who don't know what it is it's a sleep disorder/neurological condition which causes a drop in dopamine in the brain resulting in a number of symptoms.

I get a creepy feeling in my legs and an urge to move. This usually starts after dinner when I sit and increases in intensity when I go to bed. When I lay down the sensation is accompanied by an aching deep in my legs, primarily in the bottom half but sometime the entire legs. Relief comes from moving, sometimes just rubbing my feet together or stretching will help but mostly I need to walk.

Anyway,  my regular neurologist wanted me to see the sleep doctor in his practice, he's concerned that along with the RLS that I might have sleep apnea. Bill's been saying that he thinks when I sleep on my back I stop breathing for bits of time. I snore as well which makes it easy for him to hear the pauses in my breathing. At least he thinks so.

I have insurance (I've always considered it to be good insurance) so I went into this without much worry of being covered or even the least concern of the cost. His charge is $1,689. If the insurance company pays less I would be responsible for the remainder.This is for a full night in the sleep lab and the full diagnosis of the results.The lady in the office told me that my insurance company has a reputation of not paying much.  But my deductible is reasonable so I'm not all that worried.

So I said to myself, self.....  I've been to the doctor a number of times this year and surely I've built up something towards my deductable right? My deductible can't be more than $250.00-$300.00. Well I checked and I have two words holy crap! My deductible has been raised to $1,000. Damn it to hell! Don't get me wrong I'm so grateful I have insurance but $1000!

I thought Obama-care was supposed to save us money. Put one in the not true for me column.

I hope my Political Representatives, my President and my insurance company are bedding down all nice and cozy tonight (sarcasm). I know they don't lose sleep on the little guy or gal.

Jen plans to keep breathing, my legs will keep moving unfortunately, and I'll try not to dwell on my soon to be dwindling bank account, damn it!