Dominoes

I have mentioned that I have interrupted sleep. Sometimes it is worse and sometimes I think that I have solved it and sometimes I have almost solved it. I used to sleep like the dead. Julie could tell you about the time she came home after I was in bed and had forgotten her key and couldn't wake me up with the doorbell and pounding on the door and pounding on the window over my head and calling from the neighborhood 7-11. I have always had to get up in the night to pee, but I would be asleep again before my head hit the pillow.

Well, those days are long gone. I injured my left foot about four years ago and ignored the injury (a result of my own ethnic background [Colonial descendant]and our stiff upper lip and ignore the pain stupidity) until it was so bad that I couldn't walk more than absolutely necessary for over two years and while that was going on my previously injured back flared up for lack of exercise. The other things that happened because of lack of exercise were the onset of a mild case of type 2 diabetes (increased the number of night time visits to the loo), restless legs syndrome, insomnia, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. To this we add the unrelated fact that I had congenital paradoxical turbinates which meant that my sinuses tend to get clogged. I had surgery, but it only fixed it so far and the ENT doesn't want to go back because it could make things worse.

Here we are. I use a CPAP machine for the apnea. But my sinuses get clogged and I feel like I'm being smothered and so wake up. I get up to pee and have to take the mask of my CPAP off and put it back on, which wakes me completely even if my sinuses aren't clogged. I found that taking a quarter of a percocet and two coral calcium pills handles the restless legs most of the time, so that now I only have a bout once a month or less, rather than the three times a night it was before. For a little over a week I have been on Sanctura, which reduces the bathroom visits from eight a night to two. I have recently acquired a facial sauna which fills my sinuses with steam and when I add oil of eucalyptus it can clear them out in 15 minutes (five to heat up and 10 to use) instead of the 45 minutes it used to take. And, I don't have to use Sinus Buster, a good product but since it is pure capsaicin pepper extract, painful, any longer. I can't use decongestents, because of my blood pressure.

Where I stand right now is, I have solved everything except the sinuses, and they are not as bad as they were. Sometimes I get a good night's sleep. Last night was not one. I was up three times with sinuses and had trouble getting back to sleep each time. So, this morning I slept in until 10, which is the time I usually take my Sanctura. I have to take it at least two hours after eating and at least one hour before eating. If I had gone down and had breakfast at 10, I would have needed to wait until noon to take my pill, but then I would have been off for the 10 p.m. pill and . . . If I had gone down and fed the Hooligans, I would not have been able to resist eating myself, since I woke up very hungry. So, I stayed upstairs, took my pill, and read blogs until 11. Which meant the Hooligans ate late (usual for all three of us is 7:30). And so when I was feeding them Merry got impatient and jumped down off the counter and landed on my right foot, scratching it.
And the dominoes go: injure left foot, live sedentary life for four years, develop sleeping problems, solve some sleeping problems but not all, lose sleep because of sinuses, sleep late, delay breakfast so I can take my pill, delay feeding cats so I can delay my own breakfast, get scratched on my right foot by starving tomcat.