not so much

I don't know when I last slept. Certainly not this past night. I have been in the vicious cycle all night. To wit: I start to fall asleep, run short of O2---or perceive that I do---and jerk awake, usually breathing rapidly to recover equilibrium. This repeats over and over again, until exhausted, I arise and try to do something with the time--read a NYer article, post a blog. I get some nominal rest doing this but my psyche gets scrambled when the brain doesn't have its usual repair time. I came close several times last night  to waking Jan, and driving to the ER. But I feel foolish showing up there saying, "I can't sleep". This was exactly the situation a couple weeks ago in Jackson Hole for our aborted Mother's Day trip. It was solved by going to lower elevation, i.e., returning home. But I'm already home, so what do I do now to solve this?

I did take a huff on a new inhaler--cortisone-based--but it is long acting. And, in any case, my sinuses and lungs feel wide open. It apparently is that my lungs are not big enough now to do the job. The huff seemed to smooth things out a little.

Pre-cursors? Well, yesterday a.m. I got up and got a haircut and then hurried home to hook up the boat and do the first day of fishing in Idaho. There were numerous obstacles: I had to get a tire repaired the day before, which also meant up early and sitting in the tire shop while they located the screw that was in the driver's side rear tire. We proceeded to Idaho where the boat was scrutinized for quagga mussels twice. Once at the border, where I had to buy an invasive species sticker ($22) and then again at the lake where it cost an additional $20 to launch.The people at the lake couldn't get their card reader to work with their wifi hotspot. We felt we were on borrowed time as a storm was predicted to come in with heavy winds later that afternoon. There we were wasting time on the dock while the wind increased. Then the damn boat wouldn't start. Looks like my battery was a failure after all. We had to jump the batteries for the electric motor to get enough juice to power up the engine. Finally we fished with the wind for about 2.5 hrs--our usual sojourn there. I caught one nice bass, but it was tough sledding. Couldn't get the lures down because of the wind. Had trouble trailering the boat given the wind. Then when we got home I had a devil of a time parking my boat in the garage. I've only been doing it for years, but yesterday it gave me fits. By the time I walked into the house I could barely put one leg in front of the other. Not good. Can I no longer engage in this level of daily activity normally? I immediately tried to get a nap, but failed. In  fact I was dragging through out supper and the evening. Why then couldn't I get to sleep at the regular time?

I tried to engage the IHC site for my lab tests before I started this post, but it seems dead. Perhaps, it keeps doctor's hours? Or maybe this early is the time they do site maintenance. So I still do not know the outcomes of my overnight oximetry trial of last week. Where over all does it show my O2 saturation during sleep? I sampled a number of measures last night--when just falling into the cycle, after the panic breathing, etc. Unsurprisingly, after panic, my O2 saturation is off-the-charts good: mid to high 90s. But this is also a time for widely variable pulse rates. I got one reading last night of 150! Can you say possible SVT? On the other end when just entering the cycle, I got several readings in the mid-80%s and one that was 77%. Not good. I don't know if these extremes are a function of the vicious cycle I am in, or if they are common. The overnight trial would certainly shed some light.

The absence of that data also figured in my not hieing off to the ER quite so quickly. So, if I can make it to sun up, I will pester my doc's office to get some resolution. I still have a sneaking hunch that some O2 from an O2 concentrator might solve this problem. It may be very expensive to do this without the help of Medicare. (A colleague who has been using such a device for years, suggests one rents them. Even with Medicare supplementing it, it still costs him $23 per month.

Time for resolution,,,