Curse of the Black Cat

I can’t remember the last time I had a good night’s sleep. Lately, it just seems so much worse. I feel so agonizingly tired all the time and my fibromyalgia had been getting better but now it’s back with a vengeance. I know what the doctors said — no rest, no ease of pain. I just feel like everything hurts, even my eyeballs.

This morning I finally accepted the truth.

Aloof is a lot to blame for my lack of sleep and something has to be done about it whether I like it or not and whether he likes it or not.

Non-stop for months now he has been on a tirade about his food. I guess it’s just been getting worse and worse since I cut off the cat food ever-dispenser and went to feeding them twice a day on a vet-recommended restricted diet that the vet insisted that he’d get used to. He hasn’t lost any weight though Needy has but Aloof’s attitude has just gotten worse and worse.

How does he tirade? He goes around knocking things off of the furniture, whatever will make noise or spill — he’s figured out that cans sometimes have fluid in them.

So he starts anywhere between 3:30am and 5am and he starts sliding things off of my bed stands and dresser and he’s found other ways to make noise that annoys me too. He’s discovered the right amount of time from when I wake up and yell at him and he runs away to just before I’m about to fall asleep again so I never quite get back to sleep. Clearly he’s learned some sort of sleep deprivation torture from Dick Chenney’s people.

This is why I never want to get up in the morning, why after the animals have been fed in the morning at 6am, I can drift back to sleep, sleep through my alarm and be late to work, and sleep through half the weekend. It’s why I never feel rested through the work day. It’s why my eyes feel so tired that when I blink I feel on the edge of dreaming almost constantly and it’s getting worse.

So tonight, I’m going to start putting Aloof in Pugly’s kennel when I go to bed. Pugly and Needy always sleep quietly through the night or if they don’t, they rest or play quietly near me while I sleep and don’t wake me up until the alarm goes off — or until I start chasing Aloof. Aloof is the one that has to learn that bed time is bed time.

Of course, catching him is going to be the hard part. Catching him more than once, will be near impossible. But I think it’s this or part ways and I’m not ready to think about that.

Tags: the cats, the puppy, sleep deprivation, black cat, retraining a cat, photo blogging, flickr

Waiting While I’d Rather Be Doing Other Stuff

I put in a call to my GP this morning about the pain in my stomach, right side and back, as well as my migraine, bloatiness and lack of appetite.  I said straight out that I’m not going back to the E.R. (or E.D. — interesting that since that series started most actual E.R.’s now want to be called Emergency Departments) and I don’t want to pop oxycodone all the time — makes me too sleepy and discombobulated, and that’s saying something.

As it is all morning I’ve been trying to pry my eyes open.  I can’t decide if it’s not feeling well, leftovers from last night’s oxycodone, or just my regular morning meds…or a combination of them all.  It’s very hard to program with your eyes closed.  OK It’s not hard to program that way.  It’s hard to do the analysis part of my job that way and I’ve been trying to go through papers and notes and code from 9 months ago and figure out what was done and why and what wasn’t done and why not and who decided what because last Friday someone got ants in their pants to actually finally go-live with their project after letting it sit for 9 months and it still doesn’t have anyone in charge.  Oy!

So, while my brain is trying to sleep and wake up and sort out my lack of filing system, I’m now apparently waiting for the surgeon to get out of surgery around 3pm to talk to my GP to discuss what to do about me and my pain and my possible 2nd gallstone attack.

And what I’d really rather be doing is going to the grocery store or paying someone to go to the grocery store and having someone do my dishes while I take a nap or watch my finches.  In fact, I still need to get a photo for today and I’m trying to figure out how to capture a picture that represents the pain I’m feeling.  Any ideas?

Tags: pain, migraine, gallbladder, gallstone, surgeon, GP, grocery store, project365, sleepy

My Kind Of Luck

Something told me that I was tempting fate last night as I took both my new 10mg of ambien and an oxycodone for my migraine as I was going to bed at 9:30pm.  I even told Pugly that with my luck I’d get paged since I was on call.  But the regular MaxAlt migraine med just wasn’t cutting the migraine pain yesterday.  Not even a dent.  In fact, it was worse by bedtime.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, at 3am, I got paged.  It could have been a five minute deal really except that it turned out that the translator that was misbehaving wasn’t one I was familiar with.  The translator happened to be an outgoing one and it looked like it was working fine but that whatever was on the other end wasn’t accepting the data.  Here’s where the problem came in.  I couldn’t find any documentation saying what application the translator was associated with.  Hours later when I found one tiny mention in a file that wasn’t with the other documentation, I thought it was misleading.  At least it misled me.  Phone calls were made; people were paged; pages weren’t returned.

Let’s just say that it was after 9am before I finally tracked down what application it belonged to and the Help Desk had me page someone who didn’t work at the hospital anymore.  Talk about outdated information.  I finally found someone in Radiology where the application was and spoke with them.  They had just discovered the problem five minutes before I finally got to them.  At that time, the interface had been down about 8 ½ hours.

It’s still down.  They’re working on it.

Needless to say that I’m very tired and sleepy.  I can feel the hint of the migraine taunting me in the back of my head somewhere but at the moment I’m too tired to care.

My small victory is that my complaint about the undocumented translator did not go unheard.  Much to the grumbling, pouting, foot-stomping diva-tude chagrins of my fellow teammates, we’ve been told to get our act together in the next 6 weeks.  Not only are we to have everything documented, but it all has to be in Visio.  FW, king of the divas, is pissed because he apparently hates Visio and prefers Word.  He at least has been trying to keep everything documented but it just wasn’t in Visio.  So he threw a real pissy fit.  He looked just like Pugly, all wide-eyed and foot-stomping and pouting, does when Needy is getting away with something he doesn’t like.  GE on the other hand, stupidly admitted that he never documents anything — something I have commented to him about before and for this very reason.

So, it all has to be in Visio and in one place and we all have to do it.

Meanwhile, Radiology just got their side working and FW is petulantly working on changing the error message so it includes the pager number of the Radiology DO since one of my complaints on top of everything else was that even once I figured out who the application belonged to, no one seemed to know who the DO was or what the DO pager was, especially not the Help Desk, who is supposed to know these things or the night time desk support.

Oy.

Tags: work, sleep, migraine

Finally, A Reason To Sleep In, Mom!

My mom is one of those God-awful early-risers.  You know, those people who are awake before 5 am and have had breakfast, are dressed, and have read the paper and gotten started on the day by 7 am?  Those are my parents.

The battle to sleep in on Saturday mornings began the moment I turned pre-teen.  Or maybe it was when Saturday morning cartoons stopped being interesting.  I don’t know.  Either way, I always wanted to sleep until 10am or later.  My Mom thought sleeping past 7am was a crime against nature.

Even after I moved out, it was not unusual for her to call me at 8 am and act surprised that I was still in bed.

Now, with me being on the East Coast in the Eastern Time Zone and them being in the Mountain Time Zone.  It actually works out quite well.  I’ve actually called and woken them up a couple of time and had the pleasure of saying, “Oh, did I wake you?”

Anyway, it turns out that catching a few extra zzzz’s may actually help you stay slim.  According to a study of more than 68,000 women presented at the American Thoracic Society meeting in San Diego this year, those who slept seven hours weighed 7 (seven) hours weighed 5.5 lbs less than women who slept 5 (five) hours or less.  Frequent all-nighters may slow your metabolism.

Talk about getting your beauty sleep!  From now on I’m going to tell my mom that I’m getting my skinny sleep.

(Source: Self, August 2006)

Tags: sleep, health, weight loss, wellness, interesting trivia

Change Is The Only Constant

Since arriving here and “settling” into my new apartment, I’ve kind of dragged my feet about getting a couple of things done. For example, I’ve not finished unpacking my office, I’ve not re-arranged my kitchen after my mom unpacked, I’ve not taken my “diet” seriously, I’ve not hung up any of my wonderful art collection, and I’ve not bothered to get my license changed. Maybe the feeling that it’s all temporary has enabled the procrastination.

However, I don’t have that temporary thing to be my excuse any more. Yesterday I found out that I’ve been a permenant employee for a while, but my boss just forgot to mention it. So that’s good news, but I guess I need to stop resting on my laurels and get with the program now, huh?

***Well, I saw the newest specialist doctor this Thursday. This one is going to help me with my sleep disorder(s). She’s scheduled me a stay in the hospital at the end of September for a sleep lab to see if I might suffer from sleep apnea. but she also has diagnosed me with insomnia, something I’ve tried to get doctors to recognize before. She gave me a list of rules to follow like no reading or watching tv or playing on the laptop in bed anymore unless I’m sick. From now on, the bed is just for sleeping or, if I ever become intimitely involved with anyone, sex. The worse thing she said is that I need to give up caffeine completely.  I’ve done that before so I figured, I’d suffer a couple of days of headache and irritibility and be fine. No biggie, right?Well, the first 24 hours weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. I had a headache that wouldn’t go away despite Tylenol and Ultracet. The next 12 hours weren’t so bad either. However, 44 hours in, I became so nauseated and my stomach was so upset that I had to rush to the bathroom 3 times while the gal at the hair salon was coloring my hair. She pointed out that I was incredibly pale and looked like I might pass out. I was shaking from the weakness and left without the usual blow dry and style followed by shopping in the outlets in Freeport. I stopped at the grocery and picked up a bottle of Gatorade, a box of crackers, some Twizzlers (comfort food), and a Diet Coke. I’ve been sipping the Diet Coke. I still feel nauseated and I’ve got a nasty migraine.

I guess I’m going to have to wean myself off of caffiene rather than going cold turkey. I’ve never had this problem. It’s never been this bad when I’ve given it up in the past.

Ah, to be skinny, caffeine-free, and sleeping with ease…

Tags: insomnia, sleep apnea, migraine, wellness

I Can’t Believe It’s Almost June Already

I can’t believe tomorrow is June already. This month seems to have slipped right by without too muc hooplah.

I really have been meaning to write and I really don’t have much of an excuse. I’ve spent the month working, dieting, shopping, orgainizing, unpacking, cleaning and purging. I have a whole closet full of stuff to take to Goodwill but I’m reluctant to take it until I’m done with the unpacking. I’m so lazy I just want to go the one time. My goal is to have nothing in those carboard boxes except holiday decorations — and those will be transfered to more appropriate boxes as they are unpacked and used. Everything I unpack I ask myself if I’ve been using it or if I really plan to use it and if I do, it gets put in a place to stay and if not, it gets put in a box to go. I can’t believe how many boxes I’m giving up, though they aren’t out yet. However, it does feel kind of good to purge. I’m ready to stop being a packrat and start embracing my inner Monica. I guess all of those episodes of Clean Sweep are starting to pay off.

My electric bill for the first month here was $66! I couldn’t believe it. I have a townhouse that is 100 square feet bigger than my last one and my bill is $100 - $150 cheeper! Of course, there’s no air-conditioning which was a big factor in New Orleans. I’ve discovered that so far, outside of one day, I’ve not really had a real problem with heat. Certainly there’s no problem with humidity up here that I’ve discovered. BJ always said humidity in New Orleans was like walking into one of those hot wet hand towels they give you in sushi restaurants. :hehe: The one day I had a problem it was 80 degrees outside and pouring down rain with high winds so I couldn’t have but two windows open that were protected somehow. The next day I bought a fan for downstairs and one for upstairs just to circulate the air. I’ve used the upstairs one a couple of times but not because of real heat — when I have migraines I feel hot with no raised body temperature but the fan blowing on me makes me feel better.

I’ve had a couple of migraines, mostly on Sundays, that were so bad I thought I’d be sick — was actually once. I only had one really bad one that I went to work with and I suffered but I made it through the day. I did get one last Friday afternoon too but again I just suffered through it.

I have a theory about my morning headaches. I think some of them are caused by sleep apnea. Now, the cats aren’t talking so I don’t know if I snore. I asked my mom if I did since we shared the big bed at the inn in April but she didn’t hear me snore — probably because she couldn’t hear it over her snoring. Anyway, snoring isn’t the only version of sleep apnea. It can be caused by a cessation of breathing for whatever reason. I think that may be my problem. Thinking back there have been a few times when I woke up taking a deep breath. Symptoms include restless sleeping, insomnia, day-time fatigue, and feeling tired all of the time. These are all things I suffer from. Still, I don’t have an appointment with a doctor until mid-July so I’ll just have to keep a list of things I want to talk to her about.

I tried eliminating the food on the no-no list but I just couldn’t do it. I did cut back on the foods on the list and I was caffiene free for 3 weeks before I was out shopping and hit with a bad headache and it was easier to get a Diet Coke than buy Tylenol when I have 2 bottles of Sam’s Club-size Tylenol at home. :plain:

So, I’m still having headaches pretty much daily. I’m trying to stick to just taking Tylenol. I reserve Ultracet for the bad ones and I’m avoiding the Zomig completely.

***My weight loss program isn’t going as well as planned. I’ve been staying within my WW points but I’ve only lost 1.6 pounds this month. The last few days my weight has been going up. Granted, I’ve not done well with the water and I haven’t added exercise back into my lifestyle. I’ve had excuses. Excuses aren’t always good reasons. I haven’t done my Firm DVDs because there are still big boxes with artwork in my living room in the way. I haven’t been on my treadmill because until this weekend there were too many boxes in the office surrounding it (stuck in the upward position). Today I went shopping for many hours and came home increadibly sore and aching — a sign that I’m really out of shape. My knees have started bothering me too which is upsetting me because I’m afraid that my weight has finally done something to them. I really don’t want to end up having to do surgery because having watched Red go through it, I know that the surgery doesn’t really fix it and you end up having to do it again and again. ***I woke up at 7am this morning to a loud beep sound which turned out to be something in my house announcing that the electricity was out. What I then realized is that if the electricity goes out, I have no heat (because the gas heater is plugged into the electric socket for some reason) and I have no phone (because the cable phone is controlled by the special cable box which is plugged into the socket) and I cannot cook because I have an electric stove and my bathroom is pitch dark because there are no windows in there…By 8:30am, it was below 60°F in the upstairs room with the sunlight flooding in. Fortunately someone else in the complex must not have a cable phone because they turned on the electricity again.I just hope that doesn’t happen during winter… ***I went to see Shrek 2 this morning at 9:30am. It really is hard to get used to the old theaters again. New Orleans has those THX stadium-like theaters that really spoil you. Still the movie is really good, as good as the first. I love Puss in Boots but I’m a sucker for a cat with a Spanish accent. What can I say? One of the funniest scene is when people run in terror from the Starbucks to the Starbucks across the street…you’ll understand when you see it. Really, I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it again to catch all the little details and jokes.Next weekend I’m going to see Harry Potter for certain, and I’ll probably go to the Old Port Festival…unfortunately alone. I’m really not good at walking up and talking to strangers — guess my parents taught me too well — so I doubt I’ll come home with any new friends, but I’m at least going to go check it out.Toward the end of the month, there’s an anime/gaming con in Portland which I am definitely going to. I’m just trying to decide if I want to go for all three days (well, Friday eve through Sunday anyway) or just Saturday and Sunday. I really want to make an effort to go to the open board gaming and open SJ gaming since those are the things I’m used to and miss. I also want to go watch the Cosplay and learn more about it because I think I would be interested in participating in that in the future…guess I need to take sewing lessons.I have been kind of keeping my ears open for some kind of artsy class. I went to two craft stores today and inquired about the classes for next month but both only have painting classes this month — something that just doesn’t interest me unless it’s painting objects and not canvasses. I’d like to learn soap-making, candle-making, beading, sewing, applique crafts, mosaic art, and maybe glass staining. I would like to learn how to feaux paint my furniture too. I’d also like to take a cooking class — I wish now I’d taken a cajun cooking class before I lost my job.

***I’m just now really starting to miss “back home”; really it’s just little things, like the sushi place I used to go, just hanging out with friends occassionally, going to movies in the Palace, gaming, Cafe Cafe’s salads, my favorite Mexican places, Blue Bunny yogurt (do you know how hard it is to find Light Yogurt made with Spenda here?), and other little things that add up.Of course, finding Skinny Cows in coffee and strawberries & cream flavors helps a little… ***I know it’s going to take a while but I’m still having anxiety attacks about losing my job. I’m really kind of worried that the moment I get everything unpacked and have paid for my “new” used washer & dryer (buying them from some neighbors who are moving back South in a few weeks because the winters are too long), then I’ll be fired again. I just don’t feel secure though I don’t know why not. I mean, o.k., this is a 2 year temp job which makes me a little more easily disposable and also I don’t feel like I know everything I should yet but I also feel like I should already — though I know I was at my last job for over 6 years and while I may have at times thought I knew everything, I didn’t. I want to make myself indispensable so tomorrow I am getting together with MJ to learn how to do some of the work that only she does on the interface team because the other two simply had no interest in learning/doing it and it’s a bit of a carry over from when she worked on the Eclipsys product. She just seems so overloaded with stuff so I suggested she give some of the work to me and show me how to do it. My other two assignments are kind of slow and boring and I’d like to break it up.Still, the nightmares and the anxiety aren’t going away. In a way I think they are getting worse. I’ve been at my job 2 months now and I really feel like I’ve got another month to really prove myself. I want to accomplish something beyond a few Visio diagrams and creating some how-to documents.Though the Skinny Cows do help…sometimes…

Tags: Clean Sweep, migraine, sleep apnea, insomnia, Ultracet, Zomig, Shrek 2, anxiety

Drug-aided Ramble

I woke up again with a headache this morning. However, this time I woke up at 5am with a migraine so bad that I thought I was going to throw up and in fact I wished I would to get it over with. I took an ultracet sometime before 5:30am but by the time I drug myself out of bed at 6:30am, I was still feeling just as bad, if not worse. So around 7am, I took a Zomig — I haven’t had to take one of those in 3 months or so. However, the Zomig didn’t start actually kicking in until around 9am and still the pain didn’t go away; it just seemed to make me sleepy. A little after 11am, I got really sleepy and the pain subsided but the pain started coming back around a quarter to noon.

Well, now I am quite aware of this pattern of waking up with a headache. At first I thought it was because of the insomnia thing, but for the most part for the last month or so, I haven’t had a real problem with that like I used to. Maybe once or twice out of the last month I had trouble sleeping whereas I used to go weeks without being able to sleep more than an hour or two a night. But this pain is extremely distinctive and I’ve noticed the pattern now because my headaches have been better and no so consistant — i.e. all day and all night long with no breaks.

Basically, I wake up with this headache. Sometimes it’s just a minor buzz pain but this morning it was like pain in surround sound. The pain seems to eminate from two places — my forehead and the back of my neck. It feels like maybe I’ve all tensed up in my forehead while I slept. My neck feels like I’ve slept funny, but I sleep pretty much the same every night — on one side or another or on my stomach with my head turned to one side. I thought perhaps those lumpy pillows from the inn were an issue but my nice semi-new fluffy ones haven’t improved the situation. It always feels like I’m waking from somewhere deep when it happens, like a vampire who’s been in tupor all day and now the sun is setting.

The first sips of cold caffiene in the morning usually help, I think, but it could just be getting up and moving around that helps — I hope it’s the later since I’m giving up caffiene starting on Monday.

I did a little research on migraines/headaches that start while you’re sleeping. It was hard to find because most articles refer to the sleep-related triggers as sleeping too long or not sleeping long enough (since I go to bed around 10pm or 11pm and try to sleep until 6am — 7 - 8 hours as recommended, those can’t be the issues, right?). However, I found an article on cluster headaches that refers to morning headaches brought about by low-oxygen content in your blood while you sleep. Well, this condition is caused by sleep apnea.

So, I looked up sleep apnea. Since I live alone and am quite single, I don’t have anyone to tell me that I snore or have a tendency to stop breathing while I sleep. However, now I wonder if this is the case. Some of the symptoms are morning headaches, tired all the time, and restless sleeping patterns. There are others, but those caught my attention. In order to be diagnosed I’d have to go through a sleep study of some sort.

However, I just moved up here and have just designated a PCP for my HMO (though I’m not insured until tomorrow). In order to be accepted by this PCP, I have to go for a new patient physical, which I think is a good idea because it provides a base line for possible illnesses and accidents later. However, the first available appointment for a new patient is mid-July — which was pretty much the case for all the PCPs up here. *sigh* I did ask the nurse about the possibility of my becoming ill or getting in an accident prior to then and she said they would probably do something to get me in right away in that case.

So, it’s going to be a while before I can see a doctor about my headaches and such. In the meantime, on Monday I’ll start the “headache restriction” diet and I think I’ll pull out a notebook and start keeping track of the headaches, possible triggers, and what I eat. I need to lose about 25 pounds, I think and maybe that will help some. In fact, the sleep apnea article said a lot of people that suffer from it are overweight and that when they lose just 10% of their weight, it improves their condition greatly.

***By the way, it was suprisingly warm today. I wore short sleeves to work. I have to wear a sweater at my desk because of the air conditioner blowing on me, but otherwise, the day is beautiful and surprisingly like the Spring I am familiar with. ***I spoke with PW last night — first phone call from my new digital phone — unlimited long distance! I wanted to know about her date.Apparently it was someone from work and while he’s nice and all, she probably won’t go out with him again as more than friends. She said that even if she was looking for a relationship with someone, she just didn’t see a future with him. She’s bent on finding another gamer to be involved on and while maybe that’s an option to keep in mind, the last gamer she married turned out to be more interested in gaming online than interested in her. Peter found an ex-gamer and that seems to be working — at least she understands what he’s talking about and has experienced it all. Mostly, I don’t think of Meg as a gamer anymore; I don’t even think she sees herself that way. In fact, I think she originally got into gaming because of her love of acting.But I digress. Mickey and JB married non-gamers and while neither of them is actually gaming at the moment, they seem pretty happy with the decision.

I suspect if I find someone, he won’t be a gamer. Maybe I’ll get him into board games, but I’m starting to think that finding a roleplaying game up here is going to be really hard if not impossible. I asked someone at The Keep about games that are being run. He knew of a Star Wars gaming being run in the old game system (which is the one I am familiar with) but he warned me that they were particularly strange as a group — warnings about gamers from gamers is often to be taken seriously. The other game he knew about is a D&D Iron Punk game, which might be o.k., but I’m really not familiar with D&D — I played in an AD&D game once and had to have someone else write up the character and tell me what to roll each time.

Plus, most of the people I’ve seen at The Keep were young’uns. I’m in my 30’s already and maybe I’m just too old to find a roleplaying group up here. Older gamers seem to have estabilished game groups that they are comfortable with. They don’t advertise at game shops.

Tags: migraine, Zomig, sleep apnea, roleplaying games