Night of the living dead

[mdlbear]

I did not have a good night last night: straps, wires, and tubes are not conducive to sleep. Last night was my night for the sleep apnea test; they give you a gadget to wear that straps on and includes two strain-gauge bands, a tube going up to your nose, and an oxymetry sensor that clips onto a finger. They really prefer 5 hours worth of sensing; they'll be lucky if they got four. I think I finally got to sleep around 2:30, after taking a flexeril at 2:00. After trying the couch -- the flower_cat was wakeful for different reasons.

Tried adding niacin and B12 supplements to my daily pill salad. The recent tests for those were in the normal range, but I figure it's worth seeing whether they help the neuropathy and triglycerides anyway. I'd forgotten about the facial flushing effect from niacin -- impressive.

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

I swear, I have no idea how they get usable results from ANYBODY under the usual testing conditions -- strange bed, strange attachments to one's body.

Did they let you test at home? That would be some help anyway.

[mdlbear]

They did let me test at home; otherwise it might not have been possible at all. I was still sleepless from 11 to 2:30.

[johno.livejournal.com]

When I had my test, Kaiser Hayward said all the hook ups and observation rooms were only for advanced cases.


I was given a monitor box that strapped onto my arm, which had 2 finger clips for pulse and o2 sensing.

They could tell by pulse rate and 02 levels how interupted my sleep was.

[mdlbear]

Strapped onto the body and a wider variety of sensors, but similar.

[ravan.livejournal.com]

Heh. I had to go to the sleep center, and have leads stuck in my hair, plug the bands, nose thing, and pulse oximeter. Plus the mattress there isn't comfortable...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Ugh. You have my sympathy.

Be sure you let them know about the flexaril--different drugs can change the way you sleep.

[mdlbear]

They're just going to read the machine; I can mention, but I don't think it will make much difference at this point.

[roaringmouse.livejournal.com]

I went to a sleep center. I had to go home by bus. I brought my own pillow.

I goofed on Monday. My doctor told me to Niacin. I took the dose and ended up in the hospital because of the reaction. I couldn't breath and I thought I was having a "CSI" moment where I was going to combust into flames. Silly mouse.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

There should be a warning on Niacin. Take the controlled release version only. And sometimes that doesn't help.
That's ok, Jennie took pictures of the Wired Matthew. He was doing a sleep study too. Yep, 9 years old and sleep study. Poor Kid. They wired him at Kaiser Redwood City. He got to go home to sleep. And Mark handed them back the equipment the next day.
I hope you get something useful out of the sleep study. Besides a CPAP machine.

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

Regarding Niacin - the snapshot from Wikipedia mentions that there is some doubt as to whether the "flush-free" form (inositol hexanicinate) actually helps with health issues like Cholesterol levels. The latest studies I've seen indicate that it doesn't. What is CAN do, however, is help your body get used to niacin.

I first tried the standard nicotinic acid form of niacin and got flushing. I also got flushing with the sustained release form of nicotinic acid. So I went to the flush-free inositol hexaniacinate form for a while. When I read the medical studies showing that it wasn't effective, I switched back to the nicotinic acid and found that the flushing was much less than it had been the first time around.

(Of course, even that may not be desirable. One of the papers suggested that the flushing action itself may be part of the reason that niacin works -that the widening of the capillaries and increased blood flow helps the good cholesterol remove the bad cholesterol deposits. But that was speculation, not proof.)