WARNING: the
following posting is probably not for the weak of heart, plus it violates a few
of the (remaining) Bottom Feeder’s rules:
A rule: Don’t talk about yourself or your medical condition;
I am.
Another rule: don’t
publish “Selfies”; I am
Yet another: don’t
put ugly things in the blog; I did
Okay, with profuse apologies, and a claim of “I’ll never do this again”
I will proceed and you may now click away if you wish..consider yourself forewarned!
So….
(Breaking Rule No. One) In this long journey with Pulmonary
Hypertension, various physicians have said “you know, it might be a good idea
to get a sleep study”, and I generally ignore that. I may indeed have sleep Apnea, I do snore
(ask MFO), but, as far as I know I never completely cease breathing unless this
is the afterlife. I’m sure I’m
uninformed, but it just seems to be in the category of “Hey, we could do this,
so what the heck!” Plus, it is just
another (perceived) reason to have another piece of gear on your face going to bed…
Night, night, sleep well!
So after months of medical nagging, I finally agreed to have the
sleep test, er, I mean Study which sounds better. I even rescheduled a couple
of times, but finally last night I reported to our Bean Center at 8:45 and was
let in by the “night tech”, and led back to the Sleep Center. Now my helpful friends conveniently posted
the cartoon that led this posting off for me, and I thought: “ha ha, that’s funny”. Yeah, Right...read on.
Having had a tour of the renovated sleep center at another
local medical facility, I was expecting similar conditions, or a room that looked like
a suite at the Marriott. Well, it
turned out to be more like Motel 6
Spartan accommodations to say the least. And (maybe
understandably) no TV and reliable internet. Oh,
just game 7 between the Bruins and Maple Leafs, what the heck. Anyway, the techy guy says "well, let’s go get
you hooked up". Great! (visions of two or three EKG like sensors glued on). Well, about
40 minutes later, the guy in the cartoon has nothing on me. Mr. Tully, I am you!
(Breaking Rule No. Two)
Which also breaks Number Three!
Before I “turn in” I was admonished to “be very careful” if I
would like to roll over. I don’t think I
can. So me and my harness climb
carefully into bed, which looked like a instrumentation hook up for a GVT.
“Sleep” did not come until well after midnight, and awake
about 3:35, about 45 minutes before the “wake up” call came. Thank God I didn’t have to go to the
potty during the night. They want you out of there by
5:30 and it is a good 35 – 40 minutes to reverse the instrumentation process,
and because I was the “second patient”, MFO was to arrive at 6:00
They need about 3 – 4 days to peruse the data, and come up
with some conclusion (and most likely a sales brochure for a CPAP device). What a (pun
intended) nightmare. It was awful. Maybe valuable info for somebody half my age,
but a 76-year-old codger? As far as I know,
that completes all the diagnostics anybody can think of. I go back up to Hopkins next week for a
follow up.
I was going to rant a bit about selfies, but that can wait for another time. Thanks for listening if
you’re still here, it helps. And tonight cocktail hour will not be
obviated by a 24-hour ban of alcohol.
DFD
