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| lol, Kai is looking at you |
It's just such a cool machine, I played with it through most of the first night and set up the app account at midnight because I still wasn't asleep. But last night I knew what I was doing. Got the warm up going, set ramp for 15 minutes, humidity at 3, plopped my headphones on and watched youtube vids until pressure was normalized, then tossed them aside and rolled over into 7 hours of bliss. I remember sorta barely waking up to reattach one of the band loops, but otherwise I think I just had my first normal night of sleep in decades. I don't even remember dreaming. I always remember my dreams, usually very vividly.
They say blood pressure drops, mine was a bit dramatic. First reading this morning was 105/69 and I just laughed. 30 minutes later it's at 125/78. I'm one of those 140/90 people (170/110 sans BP med), and my doctor is happy if it's 138/87 kind of stuff on BP med. (We've tried everything over the last 6 years.) Fasting glucose was 88, nice to see it below 90. They say you lose weight too, looking forward to that happening. *crossing fingers*
I'm very surprised my neck isn't bothering me too badly. Usually when I sleep hard, I wake up with rather vicious neck pain. This is fairly mild.
Of course, this could all go horribly wrong tonight, but for now, I'll take it. 20+ years of super insomnia might be over soon.
So, when I first went in, I was lapsing into 78% O desat and not waking up a lot, compared to some people. Some people wake up anywhere from 40-100 times an hour. I have felt for a very long time like sleep is bad, and I spent years making myself stay awake until it was just part of me to be a super insomniac. I grew terrified on pain meds and muscle relaxers that I wouldn't wake up one day. My brain was doing everything in its power to jolt me awake enough to breathe, even ten years ago when they first tested me and didn't find apnea (but they kicked me out early because I wouldn't sleep), and over the last few years it's like my brain is too tired to keep doing that any more. I get so super relaxed that I just stop breathing, even if airway is clear, and I used to wake up to horrible adrenaline surges and tachycardia events. The tachycardia was real, got surgery, but I'd still wake up into super anxiety attacks after that. It was like my brain was doing everything it could to make me breathe in my sleep. Years and years and years of that, and over time it's like it just can't keep that up any more.
I can't help wondering if this is partly from the injuries in that car accident. All this neck stuff at the top of my spine, right under my skull, nastiest pain for many years, and it took years of physical therapy and chiropractor and home stretches and core strength to finally break through all that pain static. But the pain coming down a little didn't make sleeping any easier. One position for too long wakes me up in a slamming headache across the back of my head right above my neck, so this whole fibro-pinched nerve thing is pretty miserable sometimes. So if that amount of problem is going on right next to my brain, I wonder how it affects my brain. Then you throw handfuls of narcotics and benzos and a variety of other colorful goodies onto that, and no wonder I've been fighting sleep most of my adult life. I stop breathing when I'm not conscious. That was my number one motivator cleaning off meds.
Also, not sure yet if this is being said prematurely, but I'm not having the stuffy nose or sneezing at all this morning. I think I don't handle humidity well. I grew up in the desert southwest, and I feel like I'm hanging out in a heated swimming pool area when I'm breathing summer humidity in MO, so I think I was overreacting to air that was a little too moist for me yesterday morning. Time will tell.
So all y'alls who live way more normal lives and think CPAP sucks, just wanna put it out there that I love mine and I really hope good things come of this. If I come to hate it later, this is here for me to remember that it started well.
