Nighty Night on NW 22nd

I spent Thursday night one block from NW 23rd, the trendiest area in Portland where it is next to impossible to get a good parking spot. Unfortunately, I arrived a bit before 8 p.m. and was home before 9:30 the next morning. So much for shopping....

Almost anyone who knows me also knows that I am always tired. Even when I was young and lived in the barracks in the late 1960’s I would often come home from work and take a nap – and it wasn’t always because I had been out until 2 in the morning. A few weeks ago I went to Dr. Blessing about several things and he decided I need to have a sleep study done. It had been suggested before by someone else I had seen but with Dr. Blessing it wasn’t a suggestion. He made arrangements for me to be seen before I left the office.

I went to see Dr. Fromherz, the sleep specialist, and after a long question and answer time and reading the questionnaire I had filled out at home he scheduled me for a night’s sleep study. Thursday night was the night.

It was quite an experience. Two other women were also there. One was expecting her first-born in April and the other was probably about my age. We were each sent to our rooms and a technician explained the process. Since my ‘normal’ bed time was the latest, I was wired up last. They gave me some juice and popcorn and I had a TV in my windowless room to watch while I waited. The bed was adjustable but that wasn’t very comfortable even for watching TV. Next to the TV was an infrared camera focused down to tape and watch me through the night.

Hooking us up took at least 20 minutes each. They first marked me with a non-permanent red felt pen then they began attaching the wires. I had wires taped on my neck, my chest, my face, my legs, gelled onto my head and one that glowed red was slipped on one of my fingers – shades of ET phone home. All these wires were plugged into a terminal that hung around my neck until bed time. I was so cute. I thought of bringing my camera but didn’t. What a missed photo opp!

A bit before 11 they came in to hook it all up to the computer. It wouldn’t read all of the connections so they spent quite a while trying to fix that. They had already unplugged the heating pad I use on my shoulder every night because they knew that would cause a problem. They finally discovered the lamp that was usually on the other side of the bed was causing the problem. Lights were out and I tried to snuggle on my pillow. That wasn’t really possible since the head where all of the wires connected was tucked under it. They wanted me to lie on my back and really had no choice.

After the lights were finally out again I had to do some testing – move my eyes up and down, side to side, breath, hold my breath, curl my toes and a few more. I hadn’t taken my wake-up pills for a couple of days so I was very tired. It wasn’t hard to get to sleep. I did wake up a couple of times during the night. I thought about making a trip to the bathroom but I would have had to wake up enough to find the button to call my tech so she could come and unhook me.

Before I knew it, it was 7 in the morning and they were waking me up. She took all of the wires off and I went to see myself in the mirror. Pretty – not! Red marks from the felt pen and red marks from where the tape had been on my neck decorated me. My hair, well, it had been gelled with stuff and I didn’t fully comprehend it. I was too slow, or so I thought, to take a shower before I came home so tried brushing it the best I could.

By that time, the doc was in to see me with some preliminary results. He showed me some of the graphs that had been produced during the night. He said that I was fine for an hour here and there but the rest of the time my breathing slowed way down and occasionally stopped. This was on an average of once a minute for about 30 seconds at a time. I didn’t really snore very often and that wasn’t the problem.



The chart is 5 minutes worth from the polysomnogram. On the bottom you can see the SAO2 which is the oxygen level. It should be in the high 90's but it slips down below 90 when my breathing slows down. You can see all of the things they had me wired for. The arrows point to where things slow down.

I do have Sleep Apnea, with apneas (when breathing stops) and hypopneas (when it slows down) and will have to come back to be fitted for a CPAP which helps keep you breathing. Under some circumstances they do that the first time you come but that didn’t happen. I am also going to be checked to see if I need something done to enlarge my upper nasal passages that would make it more effective.

I came home, planning to hop into the shower but I was too tired. Andrea came over and let us know the baby is breach and that they will try to turn h/she Sunday Morning. It was then time to take Bob to get zapped. I had forgotten about the gel in my hair and was so tired I didn’t really care. He started chuckling on our way to the radiation lab and said, “Do you remember the movie, “There’s Something About Mary?””

The Ant Time of the Year... or month or day

We've had ant problems in this house for longer than I can remember. It got much worse when we had the sewer put in. This morning Bob was noticing more ants on the right side of the sink than usual. He moved the coffee-maker and discovered a repeat of Alyssa's computer hub infestation (pictured at right).

Hundreds of the buggers were outside, under and inside the coffee pot. The fact that it is black made their presence more difficult to discover. By the time I got involved there was a definite dead-ant odor at the sink. I took over shaking them out and finally took it to the utility sink in the back porch. There was a little puddle where I had set it down. When I went back to look at it a bit later there was at least 50 ants floating in the puddle. I've drained it a few times and each time there are a lot more.

Those little dots in the picture from the utility sink are a few of the ants. Tiny, prolific, irritating ants. Our auxiliary nest just might need to be replaced since there aren't any screws that will allow us to open it up to clean it out.

Addendum... The pot is gone. There was no way to open it up so we could destroy the ants. There was a screw that held the whole thing together but we didn't have a screwdriver that would fit. As I began trying to pry open the bottom to see what we could see it smelled 'anty' - not the way breakfast is supposed to smell. Bacon, now that wouldn't be bad but odorous ant - ugh.

I finally got the bottom off by taking the small hammer Bob has had since he was a kid and whacked at the plastic around the screw. I could then pull off the bottom. Outside some more ants, it was surprisingly empty. I expected to see some sort of debris like I've seen in ant-hills outside. There were still some ants in there but I wouldn't be surprised if there is a cavity I couldn't get to where they were more entrenched. I thought I saw one ant with an egg but, unless there was some place where there was the normal nest, I not so sure now.

I ended up turning the hot water on and filled the pot and the sink with hot water. Hopefully we have eliminated one cozy ant home.

It looks like we will need something else to use to make coffee in. We had been a bit frustrated with this one. Bob had made comments just this past week about how he didn't like it. I couldn't easily see the filled mark and overfilled it a couple of times and it didn't have the capacity to pull the pot out and pour a cup while it was dripping. It did make good coffee, though, had an insulated carafe and fit under our low upper cupboards.

Happy V Day

I had a fun time with grandkids today. Bob has about an hour or two before and about a two hour window after he has his radiation treatment until he starts feeling lousy again so anything that keeps him away from home longer than that just doesn't happen. I dropped Valentines off for Becca and Alexis yesterday but they were napping so I missed seeing them.

Today after our trip to get Bob glowing, I drove out to the Ernst abode. The fog/low clouds were still hanging on when I got there so I knew I didn't want to be out there with no street-lights after dark. It was fun getting hugs from Zander and Natalie. She sat on my lap for quite a while and wanted me to "tell me stories about when _____ was little" as usual. She is sweet and consistent. I sometimes think that story-telling is a dying art but I think she may single-handedly keep it alive. We had gotten the kids little boxes of sweets. After chomping through one piece, they wanted to taste each others' and then wanted to share them with me.

Alyssa gave us one of her cookie-hearts. I just realized that I forgot it in my purse when I got home so I guess we'll have to share tomorrow. After a bit and a couple of "I'm hungry"s Alyssa got out her cookie cutters and sandwich fixings. She cut hearts out of bread and spread them with raspberry-cream-cheese (MMMMMM! good), topped that with raspberry jam which was then capped off with another bread-heart with a little heart hole cut into the middle so the pink/red inside could peek through. She made enough for everyone, but the eating came after photos for her blog. What fun she has with her bloggin.

Hayden was napping until just before I had to leave. He takes a while to wake up but I did get a smile out of him before I left. I took pictures (of course) but am about ready to crawl to bed now so they will have to wait.

On the way home I stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some things for Bob. All of those things we are supposed to avoid were in my basket: white bread, Velveeta, 'white' macaroni.... You get the picture. All of the things you are 'supposed' to eat are to be avoided: whole grain anything, fresh fruit and vegetables, any thing in the cabbage/broccoli family, nuts, most milk products except for yogurt and buttermilk and Velveeta since they don't have lactose. He never has liked white bread.

When I finally got home he had already fixed some leftovers for himself. I made myself an open-faced toasted Velveeta sandwich in the toaster-oven... memories of childhood. We didn't have a toaster until I was in high-school or later. Mother made toast in the oven by toasting it under the broiler and Velveeta was the only yellow cheese I remember. The other cheese was Gjetost which is made from goat's milk whey. It probably would have tasted better with whole-grain bread like I had growing up but I went with what I used to consider to be the ultimate treat - store-bought sliced white bread. You toast the bread with the Velveeta slices on it and finish it by broiling it until the cheese bubbles up and browns a bit. It sticks to your teeth and probably doesn't appeal to many but I made myself a second one before I was done.

It wasn't the "Valentine's Day" one would necessarily dream of but it was a good day.

Time to Wake Up

I just got back from a visit with Oregon Sleep Associates. I've had a difficulty with having no energy, not being rested, being tired, snoring and jerky legs for way too many years. Sounds pleasant, no? I went to the doc a couple of weeks ago and he started the ball rolling by contacting Oregon Sleep Associates which is connected with the Oregon State Medical School. Today Dr. Fromherz asked me about 100 questions - and that was after filling out 7 pages of questions at home.

After all that and checking my vitals he thinks it is quite possible that I have Sleep Apnea , and Restless Leg Syndrome. The leg thing can be because of an iron deficiency; the other from an airway collapse while sleeping. There are several things that can be done but first they sucked some blood to test for the iron deficiency. I am scheduled for a sleep-study March 1. I check in at 8 p.m. and they hook me up to lots of different things to check me as I sleep.

If there is an iron problem, I guess I will be taking more pills. If not, it might take different pills to get my legs to relax.

If I show that I do have Sleep Apnea in the first three hours, they hook me up to a machine to help keep the air-passages open - a CPAP mask. If it shows up because of the results of all the data that was pumped in to the computer that night, I will have to come back to have the mask adjusted to make sure it has the lowest airflow to get the job done.

There are other options besides the CPAP mask -a tracheotomy which was the old way of taking care of the problem and would leave a permanent hole in my neck - not top any one's list; wearing a dental appliance that could make my tongue move forward; and a couple kinds of surgery - one is simpler but not as successful, the other more drastic but with a higher percentage of success which would move my jaw forward permanently. I'm thinking the mask sounds like it is where to start.

In the mean-time, I have some pills that are supposed to wake me up during the day. What an idea. The thought of not being exhausted from morning to night sounds like fun.

In response to so many requests:

Earlier today I sat myself down to blog and life happened. Tonight I got home from our church's annual business meeting and discovered two of my blogging daughters were thinking the same thing - time for Mom to catch up a bit.

We took Aaron home from the meeting tonight because Becca had gotten sick (yuck!) and Tami needed to take the girls home early. He said he actually has his taxes done. Yea! We don't have a W-2 we need yet.

Bob has had to start radiation therapy because his PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) indicates that they didn't get all of the cancer. It was close to the outside of the prostate and apparently some migrated out. He will finish his second week tomorrow. He has appointments scheduled for Monday through Friday until March 12th, I believe. They made 36 more appointments on his first treatment day and I believe that is what it comes to.

We go to a separate waiting room. I can go to watch the process if I want. It is interesting. It doesn't take much time once they call him in. Just long enough for him to slip off his shoes, drop his pants (modestly, with a cloth to cover him (and I complain about the skimpy things I get when I go to the doctor...)), lay down on this machine table, line up his tiny tattoos on the sides of his hips and his abdomen with red X lights. Then everyone leaves the room then the radiation machine swings around his table and shoots him on top, bottom and both sides. It only takes about 15 minutes, tops. Once a week, I think he said, they do some monitoring procedures which does take more time.

What takes time, is talking to other people who are in for the same thing. It is good time. The reason for being there levels the field. Everyone knows the surprise and the pain that the C-word brings.

Afterwards, we run errands and go home. We've only gone straight home a couple of times. Yesterday we bought a new toaster oven. My much-loved first toaster oven spit a spring last week so the door can't stay shut. I've moved that to my studio-to-be for baking polymer clay since I can rig it shut for that. The new one is larger - can hold an 11" square pan - and has a warming tray on top. I put some Bugles in a pan and put them up there - wow! Believe it or not, you can really improve the taste of Bugles. It makes the warm bread Bob likes and the crunchier toast I prefer without much of a fuss.

Time for bed. Three-hour long meetings make me tired....