I keep meaning to do this...

and yet, I always forget...

Life's pretty good. I managed to get all caught up with work, though I have a couple big projects I'm in the middle of.

I see the eye Dr today for a long-term follow-up appointment for the vision therapy I did earlier this year. I'm still just so pleased with how it turned out. The final follow-up exam I had when I first ended therapy showed my eyes only crossed a tiny little bit. And if that's held true, then my next pair of glasses (which I also hope to get today) will be MUCH MUCH skinnier as I won't need as much prism to bend the light in to where my eyes are (because my eyes are much closer to being straight). In my current glasses I have 3 diopters of prism in each lens... and they can only put in a total of 12, so I'm already half-way to that. But when the vision therapy was over, the exam showed that I only needed *half* a diopter of prism in each lens!! It's very exciting to me!!

I also see the sleep Dr today for a follow-up to get the final results (I have the preliminary numbers, but not the final Dr interpretation) and to see what they can do about the results. Something tells me they'll want to do *something* as missing sleep stage 4 (the deepest most restorative stage), and missing half the normal amount of REM sleep can't be good for me.

In sparkly fandom news, I'm still loving Manband, and I was quite pleased to see in the paper that Joey Fatone will be co-hosting the Emmy's Red Carpet for TV Guide channel (I wish it was on a channel where I got him full-screen though and didn't have to watch the channel listings scrolling by).

Absolutely freaking USELESS!!!

What the hell kind of 'sleep solutions center' are you if all you can do is treat sleep apnea?!

I met with the 'Dr' today to go over the results of my sleep study.
Here's how it went:

Me: Hi, nice to see you again
Dr: hi, please have a seat
::I sit, he goes to look for my chart, which wasn't on his desk where he was expecting it to be::
Dr: Your sleep study shows you don't have sleep apena.

That would've been IT (no more, end of meeting, no recommendations) had I not pushed a bit.
I pushed a bit to ask what the effect was for me not getting enough REM sleep.
His response? a mere 'we don't really know what the effect is'

So I tried a different tack and asked if there was anything my Dr could do or prescribe to reduce the arousals & sleep fragmentation shown on the study.
Again an insanely brief 'you-are-SO-not-worth-my-time' answer of 'ambien'.

So I'm just supposed to take Ambien forever?

I'm intelligent enough to do my research and read the studies that show Ambien does nothing for one's sleep architecture (which is where my problem is), and only helps with the falling asleep, and a bit with the staying asleep.

That Dr was a useless fucking idjit!!!!

I've made an appointment for Monday with my *real* Dr (who's actually a GOOD one) to talk about the results.
I want 3 questions answered.
1) What can I do/take to start REM sleep within a normal time frame? (supposed to get to REM within 90 to 120 minutes... it took me 302)
2) What can I do/take to increase the time I spend in REM sleep? (supposed to be ~25%, I spent a mere 9.6% of my time in REM sleep)
3) What can I do/take to get a normal sleep pattern? (I spent a good 2 hours doing nothing but wavering back and forth betwen awake, stage 1, and rarely stage 2). I'm guessing this is related to the high number of arousals I had during the night.
3a) What can I do/take to have fewer mini-awakenings/arousals during the night (I had 22.8 arousals per hour, basically every 3 minutes I jerked myself out of a sleep stage and nearly/barely woke up).

I can't believe that so called 'sleep center' was all "you have no apneas, I can do nothing for you, I have nothing to tell you, goodbye and stop wasting my time".

What the hell kind of sleep center are they running?!!

I have a strong urge to write a letter to the hospital telling them they better get an actual sleep dr running that place and remove that quack that's in there now (I think he's technically a plumnologist... or lung/breathing dr, which would be why the only thing he knows what to do with is apenas).

But still it's a 'Sleep Solutions Center' not a 'Sleep Apnea Only Center'

Arrrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!