Bit of Ivory

I am SOO tired.

Actually, being tired is not all that unusual for me. I’ve been tired for years– literally– ever since I was diagnosed with Mononucleosis in July of 2000. I had to take a semester off of school, and even now I can’t take classes that start too early in the morning. I went to a doctor about a year ago, to see if my continuing tiredness was still the mono or if it was something else. We tired a few different sleep medications, and some behavioral changes, but nothing helped. So he referred me to a sleep specialist. He looked over my file, asked me some questions, and said that he couldn’t tell why I was so tired all the time. So in February I slept overnight in the hospital’s sleep center. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how ANYONE could sleep with electrodes stuck all over your body (head, chest, and legs), two finger monitors, two respiratory monitoring belts (one around my stomach, one around my chest), a blood pressure cuff (which went off every 10 minutes) and an oxygen monitor stuck up your nose. Needless to say, I got almost no sleep. But apparently, I got enough for them to see that I had several hypopneas (a breath that’s under a normal breath, usually 50% or less) during the night. They thought that those might be distrupting my sleep. So on Wendesday, I went back to the Sleep Center, and they hooked me up to a CPAP machine, which basically blows air into your nose and forces you to keep breathing. I didn’t have to have the blood pressure cuff this time, luckily, but the CPAP actually DISTURBED my sleep, rather than helping it. Every time I almost fell asleep, something would happen with the mask, or the hose, or something like that, and it would wake me up. I think I lay awake most of the night. They were supposed to release me at 6:30 am, but I’d been awake for more that a half an hour straight by 5:30, so they sent me on my way. I went home, washed the glue from the electrodes out of my hair, and slept until 11.

I still hadn’t recovered by Thursday, and since Thursday was the Fourth of July, I had a busy day. We didn’t get back from the fireworks until midnight, and even then I was so worked up that I didn’t fall asleep until 1 am.

The alarm clock rang at 6:45 this morning. I had to go to work. Blah.

Now can you see why I’m tired?