I'm sorry this blog has become such a grind. But you must.
All comments in this thread must be submitted in triplicate. Managerial requirements, you understand.
I'm fine, but more angry for longer periods of time than I would have thought possible before.
2: I'm thinking that a few hundred more repeats I will find redemption and true love.
That's the plan anyway.
4: And accompanied with a TPS report.
Oh wearisome Condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound:
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
I ran too far and now I'm collapsed on the couch and not sure I can stand up.
I'm just bitter because I'm again unable to run.
I just took a walk to the cemetery on the other side of the Olentangy River, and I saw a group of deer. I haven't seen any in a while. I was beginning to wonder if they weren't secretly a migratory species.
I went for a bike ride and was reduced to to the consistency of a lizardbreath but some hours later was able, I think, to finish a piece that has been troubling me for months.
11: I am finding that my residual competitiveness is not working well with my old man body. Just about every erg workout ends in agony because I have targets in my mind from years past (and as a member of a rowing team, I post the results on our team site). It has become a hateful object to me.
I'm thinking of trying the very short intense intervals thing. Has that been discussed here? I am a bit skeptical but have seen many variants of it extolled.
You could do some hiit a couple times a week and longer steady state cardio a few others. I think ogged posted some stuff on hiit.
Received a "we should start sleeping in different rooms" talk last night. It was pragmatic and well-reasoned (snoring issues, mutual fears of disturbing the other person, feeling self-conscious about a CPAP) but makes me sad to contemplate it. And is logistically fairly annoying, to say nothing of being relegated to sleeping on a convertible futon couch.
If snoring is the main issue this probably won't help, but I always want to take the opportunity to spread the gospel of separate blankets. (Also CPAP was terrible for me and I'd be happy to pontificate about how great my oral appliance is for mild sleep apnea.)
One thing you might look into for logistics is Murphy beds. We got our guest bed from www.bedderway.com, they're super easy to operate and look like normal furniture when they're not in use (ours even has a fold-down desk which is how it's used most of the time). And it's a real bed that you could actually sleep on every night rather than the nightmare of a futon. We've convinced two of neighbors to get them already!
Anyway, sounds terrible, and my apologies if you weren't looking for suggestions.
CPAP was terrible
The CPAP people suck. They won't even consider making one that looks like what the Tie Fighter pilots wore. They are going to lose so much of the market as old people change from Boomers to Gen X.
19: UPETGI - my septoplasty helped, but I've been looking at trying out the oral appliance. Insurance coverage for a medical treatment provided by a dental professional is a quagmire.
No dentists are in network, so the insurance told me I could call all the Maxillofacial surgeons to see if they could provide it. Weirdly, it would be better to have an hmo and not a ppo.
If my hmo pcp recommended it, they would pay for it at in network rates with an out of network dentist from a list of dentists they have collaborated with, but since I have a ppo, I have to use my out of network benefit. I have no idea how I would figure out whether the lab that makes the device is in network.
I don't want to bore everyone else, but would love it if you could e-mail me about your experience.
18: I'd also encourage you guys not to be all or nothing about it. I'm guessing it feels emotionally like "I'm never going to be able to reach for the hand of my beloved in the middle of the night".
But instead, it can be "when we're tired and have a lot to do the next day, we make it a point to sleep separately as a favor to our tomorrow-selves." Whereas when you're feeling leisurely or connected, you can fall asleep together and either stay that way, or one person can migrate easily partway through the night because there's an inviting second bed to transition to.
Replied by email. But yes US insurance is a Kafkaesque nightmare for a medical procedure performed by a dentist, I think this is most of the reason that appliances are common in Europe but not the US. The other reason is that CPAP's let the insurance company spy on you and stop paying if you're not using it every night.
19: Hey, I and my increasingly old-man body are interested in hearing more about this. Is it the thing that, apparently, has MAD as an acronym? Was it expensive? Is there some kind of doctor-to-dentist handoff involved?
Oh, I guess we're trying not to bore other non-apneatic humans, which is just. Please feel free to forward to the linked email (lurid's) though.
Yeah, MAD is the same thing I think. Basically the whole process after the diagnosis is handled by the dentist, it's just that you can't get insurance to pay because no dentists are in-network. (When no ones in-network they'll let you go out of network, but they'll only pay the dentist the negotiated rate, which is a pure fiction, and so they only pay like a third of the cost.). I was lucky because a weird side-effect of Mitch Daniels's presidential ambitions is that I have an HSA funded directly by my employer, so I could just spend that money. That said $2500 for 5 years isn't a bad price for a good night's sleep. (Of course if it doesn't work for you or if it breaks, then that's a big financial loss.). A big benefit for me over CPAP beyond it working better for me is that it's just so so much easier to travel with. It's no more annoying than a retainer.
The main side-effect is that it can effect your bite, which I think has happened somewhat to me.
Does the Georgia tape merit a thread?
25: they were going to charge me $4500 and bill my insurance for the professional fees. I don't know what the cost of the device is. Then it would be $149 annual visit, but I would still need to see my sleep physician (an ENT in my case) annually. My doctor gave me a list of names in alphabetical order because his wife was one of the names. My insurance company gave me a list too of out of network dentists who billed them. The $4500 person only does sleep and was very honest. (That's before insurance reimbursement.) His wife looked like she might be great, but She is younger and works for somebody else who does other things too including cosmetic treatment, and there were some not great things about the billing office on Yelp. Her boss was on my doctor's list and on my insurance company's list.
I saw another ENT about my Eustachian tube who said he is seeing a lot of TMJ too, and I wonder whether a better oral device than my current mouth guard would help with that. It's one of the things apnea dentists treat. Argh.
Yeah, I forget that everything is more expensive where you live. Here we're in a low-cost low-competence equilibrium.
27: That was a legal settlement conference.
I think I could get $2000 off (70% after $600 deductible) of their rate.
Still here. Atossa has class again today for the first time in 12 days (normal winter break), and she has the pod and adult supervision for the first time in 20 days after the pod leader's covid case (reference, and we're glad to hear it was just a minor case). We're hosting the pod this week so it's hectic here but still definitely good.
I'm scheduled to get my first dose of the vaccine this afternoon. (Reference, and yes, it's very fluky, but I figured I might as well take it.) I'm looking forward to it. In addition to the obvious reason it'll be my first time biking in weeks. In theory I could go any time but it's hard to carve out time for that just for fun or exercise rather than a practical reason.
TL;DR: things are going so well, I almost feel guilty commenting and I'm worried about jinxing it...
I hate to recommend woo bullshit, but when we were snoring, we found that eucalyptus essential oil gave us nights of no snoring. Got the diffuser and the eucalyptus oil and it worked right off. I think the eucalyptus constricts whatever is blocking the sinuses, so maybe the treatment isn't that roundabout or mysterious. Anyways, it is cheap to try.
I appreciate the ENT/MAD device subthread; I do snore, and occasionally my wife decides to move to the couch. More often, she wants to listen to TV when going to sleep, which means that she embraces the couch, due to a lack of TV in the bedroom. We got a good couch a couple of years ago--with dual recliners, which was a great new (to us) feature. Depending on what she's looking for, she can sleep along the couch, or in an extended recliner, which she picks when she also wants to watch the TV as she drifts off.
To 18 specifically, 19 and 22 are good advice; it shouldn't be a penalty to sleep elsewhere -- at least, no more than the "missing them" that's unavoidable.
More generally, we're doing okay here. I'm stupid busy because the architects all decided to submit just before Christmas, so they could vacation undisturbed--while we were short handed due to holiday vacations. One of my coworkers took off through the 4th at the last minute to take care of his dad, so I got a lot of due-day work assigned. Then this morning, we found out that he's extending--and won't have internet through the 8th, so another pile of his work got assigned.
My wife had two COVID scares on staff since Christmas; fortunately, both employees have since tested negative. The first was terrible symptoms that didn't sound like COVID. It could easily have been a flu or bad cold; they had no temperature, but lots of gross symptoms like barfing blood.
The second was talked into spending Christmas day with his girlfriend's family and someone else at the Christmas gathering tested positive 2 days later. With them overlapping, my wife covered shifts Saturday and Sunday; I helped out with task work Saturday.
I've had a good overall experience with the CPAP machine. I used to periodically be exiled to the couch for snoring, but the CPAP sorted that out, and improved my sinuses in general. I don't sleep any better -- the CPAP interrupts my sleep as much as the sleep apnea did. But I'm more tolerable to be around when I'm asleep. Haven't tried any of the other potential remedies, though.
I don't hold with CPAPs. Too much hassle. Wind up losing more sleep than you gain.
I'm doing mostly ok. My sister is back in nursing care due to a bad fall, and she tested positive for the Covid, but is asymptomatic so far. And while her liver is much better than it was, she still has problems like fluid build up that resists treatment.
In case anyone wants more information on the recent shooting in my neighborhood, Sahan Journal is doing good coverage:
https://sahanjournal.com/killed-by-police/police-informant-planned-handgun-purchase-from-dolal-idd-before-fatal-shooting-search-warrant-reveals
37: When did she get the positive test? Fingers crossed she stays symptom free for 14 days.
I had to clean my dad's CPAP for a while. It was too much of a pain do to for myself.
Hope your sister gets best and doesn't get covid.
My sister just rang: she learned that her neighbour, and elderly cantankerous old git last seen been taken away in an ambulance, has died. He had got in a furious row with a neighbour about trimming a hedge, gone home, and taken an overdose. The ambulance got to him in time, but he caught Covid in hospital and died anyway.
It seems like the perfect end to 2020/lockdown story; in any case, it really upset her, partly because it brought home how little anyone in her village talks to anyone else that she only just now found out.
My aunt is in hospital (in TO) with COVID. I spoke with her this afternoon, and she seemed to be in pretty good spirits; though some of that may have been 'putting on a brave face.' She's from that generation (b. 1938) where you don't make a fuss, where you're reluctant to complain. Quite apart from her age (82), she has some other risk factors (battling cancer with high blood pressure and etc.). She's hoping to go home next week, but is worried about how to 'adjust to getting my independence.'
'I was so careful,' she said. And yet, still: she got the virus (probably due to a non-COVID-related trip to the ER, where she then picked up the coronavirus).
I hope she gets better. That's tough.
JPJ, hope she gets better. It's so frightening and stressful.
New check-in thread? Does anyone meaningfully have life outside the news right now?
I crashed into a guy a couple of days ago, so now I'm dealing with insurance stuff.
41: I'm so sorry. Hope she mends quick.
38: The positive test was the Wednesday before Xmas, so I think she is officially in the clear now -- they took her out of the Covid ward, so that seems positive.
Now my parents are buying a house for both my sisters and my niece to live in, here in MPLS. Which will be great in terms of getting to see everyone more often, but I'm not sure how good my parents' finances will be afterwards. Sigh.
