What to post?.......bad night.

The Bot brain is not up to scratch today and the reason is a mystery. Amongst the age related health issues and the Stroke I have sleep Apnoea. This involves wearing a mask every night. This forces pressurised air through the nasal passages all night keeping them open. Without it  they close and you wake from rem sleep every few minutes in a sleep/wake/sleep/wake cycle. Needless to say this is a disaster during the day and sufferers often fall asleep at weird moments. Hence the mask.

Great, got the mask, problem solved. Except once every few days I wake up and take off the mask. Suddenly I have all the symptoms of a cold. My nose runs incessantly, I sneeze,  my throat is dry and sore. Then miraculously these symptoms disappear after a few hours.

Then once in a few weeks I have a day like yesterday. The symptoms started as usual and just carried on. The sneezing was jarring enough to cause a headache. My throat was dry and sore. It carried on intermittently blocking my nose then it ran like a tap. I couldn't think properly. Now you might conclude, as I did, that the minor symptoms are the body reacting to having air forced into it. However all the fellow sufferers and the clinic I visit each year cannot explain it. They have no such symptoms as sufferers and the Doctors at the clinic are at a loss. All I can think is that the air coming through the machine has allergens which cause a reaction. As to the bad days, I suspect a minor infection of sorts. There are effects on other areas of the body too. Maybe it is just what it seems, a cold.

But guess what, I get up this morning and apart from a headache, a bit of a dry throat and a red nose, Nothing. Not a sneeze and a clear nose. I defy anyone to explain this, most medical practitioners just shrug it off.

The N.H.S. take on Sleep Apnoea

And the wikipedia version

Blogging, Apnoea and the regular insomniac.

 

This was originally posted on my Wordpress blog. Having two blogs I wanted to avoid duplications but this is a subject dear to my heart. Sleep Apnoea is often treated as a joke but to it's sufferers it is far from funny. Combined with Insomnia it is even less amusing.

 

 

 

Yet again I have suffered a broken nights sleep. Went to the bathroom at stupid o'clock and that was it. Wide awake for 2-3 hours.


Now while I will agree that the axeman thing is a bit of an exaggeration, all your negative emotions, anger, paranoia, depression etc. are much more pronounced during those wakeful, dark hours.

So when you wake up things get better, right? Well not for me. It leaves you quick to anger, quick to misread the comments of those around you. You suffer from apathy. The simplest task, Blogging for instance, becomes a mountain you have to climb, though Blogging does help with the emotional thing! It is cumulative and I have had 3 or 4 instances in the last few weeks, Luckily at the moment they are spread fairly evenly giving me a chance at recovery between.


I do have one extra problem, Sleep apnoea. Ironically the CPAP machine used by sufferers is supposed to stop you waking many times an hour due to blocked airways. See this . Now I am grateful for the permanent loan of a CPAP machine which prevents the sleep/wake/sleep/wake cycle, but when you are having a bout of insomnia lasting several hours there is a problem. Normally when wearing a CPAP mask you would be asleep, it's what they do. Now imagine if you will dear reader, laying wide awake, angry and frustrated and having to wear this in case you should actually drop off.