Tim In a Nutshell

I’m back to being a bus commuter. The trip now is about 2-3 times longer than at my old job, but it is relaxing. The end result is more time traveling with the benefit now of having a fairly solid I-can’t-work-any-later-than-this time.

With the extra time comes a need for something to do. I have a few podcasts I listen to, but they only run about an hour each. The podcasts only last for a single one way trip and I have only enough to last about half the week. I have 5 hours or so of time to fill up. Reading is a possibility, but reading on a moving vehicle can result in a sick feeling I would like to avoid.

So what I would like from my readers our there are some podcast or audiobook options. I am pondering getting an Audible subscription again, so anything off of Audible.com would be an option.

The dogs got a special treat today, a trip to doggy daycare! The wife was going to be gone all day and I was at work, so it’s an nice treat for them to be able to play with other mutts all day long.

Ulric had a good time. Maybe a little too much of a good time. I got a call from the doggy day care that he was bleeding from his paws. Bleeding a lot. Since Ulric is still a bit scared of being touched by people, they were not able to check on what was wrong. They called me, but I couldn’t do much due to work. (grumble grumble) The wife called them and got on the way and got Ulric to the vet. Turns out Ulric was playing so much, he wore his claws down to the quick and thus bled a lot. He left blood paw prints all over.

Don’t fret though! He is a mighty trooper. He didn’t seem to be in pain at all. In fact, he was his normal happy self around other dogs still.

The vet got him patched up with green gauze that makes him look like he has some booties on his back feet. Bleeding has stopped, but Ulric has to take it easy for a while so he couldn’t partake in the fun of doggy day care. He was relegated to the world of day time boarding so he could rest up and recover.

All in all, an exciting day. On the plus side, the day care didn’t charge us for the day due to the drama. They are a good bunch of people over there.

A few temptations today. I normally have some breakfast with cheese on it. Today, I had to sadly peel the cheese off of em before eating.

Dairy free today, and breathing clear. Maybe there is a connection.

In an attempt to be a bit healthier and to be able to breath better, I am starting my first 2 week trial. It will be a two week trial to see how it works. At the end of the test, I’ll see if it’s something I want to keep doing.

This one is going to be hard. No dairy. Here are my rules:

1. No direct dairy, cheese, milk, ice cream, etc
2. Butter is OK if it is part of the recipe, not spread on things

Not too complex. I’ve already got some soy milk to replace milk and it tastes pretty good. Day one has been smooth and dairy free. I don’t feel majorly different, but I am able to breath a bit better today. There are some mixed reports that dairy can cause excess or thickened mucus production. Some folks say that is the case, some say it has no affect. This trial will see if it works for me.

The benefits for me if this works will be better sleep. I am having problems being able to breath clearly at night thus resulting in me not being able to sleep well. My wonderful nasal pathways did not follow the general plan to be an appropriate size for someone of my build/size. Even a little bit of nasal blockage makes it damn hard to breath, the passage is rather small. The goal is to reduce the mucus, make it easier to breath, and to hopefully be able to sleep better.

Now I could just try to use decongestants to get by to breath easier. I have tried that, and the side effects unfortunately are not worth it. Pseudoephedrine works to clear the nose, but it gives my face muscle spasms that just feel wrong. It also make me sleepless. The over-the-counter alternative phenylephrine doesn’t work for me. Nasal sprays are not meant for long term use and make the blockage much much worse after it wears off. What is left is a quest to find the source and fix the issue. The dairy free test is an attempt to find the source.

More updates as they come!

It sucks being sick. It’s nowhere near fun to have a migraine, fever, huge congestion, and general feelings of crappiness. But what really takes the cake for me, and makes no sense, is that what is most annoying right now is that my eyes hurt. If I move my eyes in any direction, they don’t hurt. If I try to move my eyes to look far to the left, right, up, down, any direction, and it hurts like hell. It feels like I pulled my eye muscles somehow. It sucks.

to run down the cube halls of my office shouting the rocky theme while doing the victory pose with my arms raised up in the air.

Oddly enough, thinking of this causes me to grin like a mad man and increases the urge to do it.

Maybe it’s just cause it’s a slow day and nice outside and I would like to be home with the mutts.

Today marks our 3 year anniversary! While our marriage has been anything from normal from how we met and married to the current health challenges we face today, it’s been a fun ride. Here’s to many more and good health to follow!

I started a new job on November 5th. On that day, I received a welcomed email in my inbox; Clear Context V4 had been released unto the masses! It was a joyous day for me. If you have read this blog before, you know I really like Clear Context for managing email. You can checkout my posts on Version 3 and Version 2. I was so impressed at Version 3 that I ended up using Outlook for my email. The Linux guy using Outlook, yikes!

It worked great for my  work account. I was downloading my email and sorting through it in no time. Compared to my personal accounts which have somewhere between 2-5k emails in the inbox, my work account rarely got above 50. Clear Context was to thank for that. Now if Outlook were not a complete idiot when it comes to IMAP mail, my personal accounts would enjoy the same fun I am sure. However, since Outlook hates IMAP, Clear Context is not able to effectively handle my IMAP accounts.

Now in my old job, I chose to use Outlook to be able to use Clear Context. Now with my new job, I have to use Outlook. Clear Context makes it so much easier to manage and the happy coincidence of the new version being released on my first day of work makes me a happy man. jeu de la boule casinoslot machine 98bonus gratuites de casinocasino franceall slots flash casino,slots royale casino,casino slotsvideo slot machinejeux casino comwww jeux casino comcoupons bonus casino770www netpartners groupe casino frcasino jeux toulouseat black jackles jeux de casino gratuites ,jeux de casino gratuit,jeux de casino gratuites sans telechargementcraps onlinejeu de video poker gratuitescasino supermarché en lignejeu de poker casinotelecharger video poker gratuitesblack jack und nuttencasino barriere en lignewww casino on netjeu slots casino gratuitescasino machine a sous gratuitscasino 10 bonusblack jack kabel einskeno gamele meilleur casinoslot machine,slot machine jeux fr,slot machine gratuitesplay baccarat onlinejeux casino 10 euro gratuites ,casino en euro,casino eurocasino virtuel,jeux de casino virtuel,meilleur casino virtuelmeilleur casino francaiscasino video pokerblack jack bettingroulette de casinoregole blackjackjeu flash casinojeux de roulette en ligne,roulette russe en ligne,roulette en lignejeux keno en ligne gratuitesonline casino gamescasino on net gratuitesjeux casino gratuitescoupon bonus casino770casino en ligne sans depotroulette gratuitementwww jeu casinowww casino folies combonus gratuites casino770le baccaratcasino island blackjack The newly released Version 4 of the software builds on it’s already solid foundations. In my Version 3 review, I spoke of the minor issues it had with it’s unsubscribe feature. Thankfully, those are all fixed. The one big and one small feature that I wildly enjoy in this release are the new IMS Dashboard and the new Do Not Disturb button.

The Dashboard is a wonderful piece of work. It brings in all of your emails, tasks, and appointments into one area for review. This makes it so much easier to see everything related to big projects you are working on. It also is great for those working on a GTD setup. You can see everything you need. It blows the Outlook’s Outlook Today feature out of the water. I’ve found it’s been a great feature that helps me get on track in the morning and plan out my day.

More Dashboard Details

The small feature that I love is the Do Not Disturb button. Normally if you want to disable the new mail popup in Outlook, it is buried in the badly disorganized Outlook options window. Now to disable it, just press the DND button and you are set to go. If only I had this button when I was a trainer, not as many trainees would have seen my email accidentally popup on the screen. A small, but useful, feature.

More Do Not Disturb Details

Now although I can not imagine working through all my email without Clear Context, there is one sticking point: The Price. When I first got Clear Context, it was a reasonable $30. For the price, it was a great deal. I felt that even at $40, possibly $50 it would still be a great deal. Now the price for a new version has jumped up to $90. If I had not tried Clear Context before, I would have passed on it at this price point. I feel it is a bit too high of a price. Outlook 2007 itself is $87, I don’t think an addon product should be more than the product it enhances. In general, most software over $50-$60 I feel is overpriced unless it is a key need for your work. With Outlook and Clear Context, they are useful, but not 100% essential. I think they both might be able to get more customers with a lower price point. I know a few people at my company that like Clear Context, but are balking at the price. It is useful, but the price point is the deal killer.

Clear Context does help out a bit on price though. With each new version, they offer a reduced cost or free upgrade path. So after the initial investment you could continue to use new versions of the product by getting the free upgrades. This is how I have been upgrading my Clear Context version since v2. This I believe is a novel approach they use and helps get the word out about their product. So there is a balance between the initial purchase and the reduced or no cost upgrade paths. However, if the initial price path continues to increase as it has, I think the balance will tip unfavorably.

Overall, I continue to be impressed with Clear Context. The product is solid, they offer excellent upgrade prices, and have wonderful service and support. However, they do need to keep a close eye on the price.

Clear Context Demo

Download Clear Context 4 Trial 

It’s Halloween! So I’m sitting downstairs, listening to NPR, Hattie is licking my head, and now I am attempting to prove how uncool I by live blogging Halloween! While folks come to my door, I’ll document it here as it happens. Stay tuned!

6:01 pm After realizing that the motion light out front was not on after seeing folks pass the house by, the light has been turned on.

6:03 pm First trick-or-treater of the night! A trio of three young girls with no costumes. Took a few handfuls of treats.

6:16 pm Four more, a grim reaper, a packer fan, a witch, and a no-costume. Surprisingly, Ulric has not been as barky as I thought he would be.

6:49 pm Another trick or treat! A few toddlers dressed as a super monkey, giraffe, tigger.

7:00 pm Two ghouls, Ulric in full barky mode

7:13 pm Group of 5, two young toddlers and a few middle school age. Mostly skeleton costumes. Got a shout out from one of the trick or treaters for supplying Nerds as a candy.

7:14 pm Out back-yard neighbor came by as another Tigger!

7:21 pm Teenagers attack! Well, came for treats at least. Good thing is they actually made an attempt to dress up. Well, all but 2 of ’em.

7:22 pm Wife comments on the bad spelling and grammar on the live blogging. Fixed up a few bits.

7:24 pm A farmer girl! Complete with little stuffed pig and spider

7:33 pm ELVIS! Had an Elvis (with a mic!), dancer, two witches, and a toddler as a chicken

7.41 pm ninja & witch. Ninja did not attempt to kill me for the candy. Was kind of a disappointment. Would have got more bonus points if I couldn’t see him and he appeared in a puff of smoke ninja style. That too much to ask?

7.42 pm buzz lightyear, two other middle-schoolers, and an infant as a lion. The infant made me forget what the other two middle schoolers were dressed up as

7.43 pm A princess and a witch! Witches are pretty popular this year

7.44 pm Broadway’s best playing on the laptop to give some background. They’re playing the complete cast recording of Phantom of the Opera. Good stuff for Halloween.

7.46 pm A gypsy and a pirate. Pirate vs. Ninja battle is now even at 1-1

7.54 pm Witch, pirate, and a factory. Yeppers, a gal dressed up as a factory. Mega points for originality. Bonus points as their dog was dressed up like a ghost too. Pirates now up 2-1 vs Ninja. Well, ninja that I have seen. They are tricky folks.

8.17 pm Two little fairies

8.27 pm Probably the last group of the night, 5 cold trick or treaters. How did I know they were cold? They had coats on over their costumes. It looked like some orange was involved somewhere in the costume, but the coat hides all.

8.30 pm Last call has been sounded, that wraps it up for Halloween 2007! I am off to go get a wicked sugar high off the left overs.

Here’s a letter for those asking for tech support. He says it much better than I ever could.

An Open Letter to Anyone Asking Me For Computer Help

So with dogs becomes accidents. And with messy accidents comes a wife telling you to clean them up. She does have a good excuse there.

So we got some cleaning tools to help us out. We needed a replacement dust buster, ours stopped taking a charge long ago. We picked up a Dirt Devil Scorpion Turbo at Home Depot. I like it. It works great, has a lot fo power, and gets the job done. Only real downside I see is the exhaust vents on the side of the have some high winds coming out of them. If you are vacuuming something that can be blown around easily, use the extender attachment or the dust is gonna fly everywhere.

For the messier… well.. messes, we got a Spot lifter PowerBrush Handheld Deep Cleaner. Gonna have to say avoid this one if you can. The biggest downsides are a small liquid cleaner tank. Seriously, why would the pickup tank be about 4x the side of the cleaner tank. Plus to deploy said cleaner onto said stain, it’s a manual sprayer. You can get better coverage with a pump bottle with more liquid cleaner available. The suction and scrubber is good, but in the liquid deployment area it is very weak.

Both tools will help for spot cleaning. Though my wish list is to get a good wet cleaner that has some good brushes on the end of it. We borrow the local parents steam vac, but it doesn’t have any scrubbing action. It cleans, but takes a lot more passes on the carpet that I think is needed. A good steam vac with some good scrubbing brushes at the bottom would work wonders.

On the dry cleaning side of things, the wish list item is to get a vacuum with a bagless system that I can see how full it is getting. The current vacuum takes bags and it’s hard to tell how full it gets. Plus with how much hair we have in the house (3 huskies and 4 cats, hair-o-rama), it fills up fast so it takes a lot of bags. Something like this Bissell vacuum might be a good option. It has pet specific attachments and a clear dirt bin.

It’s a great start to the day waking up with the cats right next to ya and the smell of the dogs as they come inside from their morning outing.

It’s the little things that start the day out right.

So I’m fat. Huge even. Approaching blue whale proportions!

At least that’s what my doc says. I also have high cholesterol. Which I can see given how little I have been working out. Hopefully, that is going to change as today I started a new workout program.

It came, it saw, and it whipped my ass.

The program in question is Cool Running’s Couch-to-5K running program. It starts slow and builds up so I can actually run and be in shape. Who knows, maybe I’ll enter in a 5K run! Ha, that will be the day.

On my first try, I did marginal. I can’t run for very long before everything hurts and my ankle feels like it was going to explode. This makes me think of three things:

1. I am hugely out of shape
2. I might need to see my doctor to see about special footwear since my feet and ankles are weird
3. I might modify the workout to be biking instead of running.

I figure biking would be less of an impact on my knees and ankle, and I could still keep the Couch-to-5K progressions, just biking instead of running. So that will be the goal, keep on this program until I reach then end and hopefully achieve better health.

Oh yea, if you are thinking of doing the program too, there’s an awesome podcast out there to help you when you are running/biking. I highly recommend it.

Back after a fun father’s day weekend! Had a great time down in Illinois, ate way too much food, had good times with the family, and the dogs had a great time too.

Ulric is getting tons better around people. Dad and Dina were able to pet him. L and I are able to pet him without him shrinking away from us. Big score there! He sat on my lap for a while on the drive home, and he was comfy and even took a nap there. He’s progressing nicely.

And a belated birthday to my friend 11frogs!

Last week I completely forgot that this past weekend was memorial day weekend. Shows you how zeroed in on the calendar I am. Fortunately, Leah did remember it was a holiday weekend had plans for us on Memorial day to spend some time with her family up at the lake house.

The start to the weekend… well… sucked. On Thursday, I got dead sick at work. Dizzy, sneezing, could not breath through my nose, and super drained. Went home over lunch and was down and out for the rest of the day and the next day and part of the day after that. Still didn’t feel 100% up until this morning. So I’m back at work banging away the computer problems and trying to figure out what is wrong with my laptop.

The big highlight, Ulric Von Kenai! We have a new puppy in the house, Ulric. He’s a rescue from the Twig project here in Madison. An awesome rescue group that we will do more foster work with in the future. Leah and the director got along to a freakish degree.

Ulric is a Siberian husky/German Shepard mix, about 12 or so weeks old, and all of 8 pounds. He’s a small little guy, but feisty. Makes sense that he is so small since he had a bad start of things. He was surrendered to animal control in Milwaukee by being dumped in the trash cans behind animal control along with his litter mates. A rather shitty way to start life.

Despite the hard start, he’s a great little guy. He loves being around other animals, and has become Sebastian’s shadow almost. He loves both Sebastian and Freyja and runs all over following them and trying to play with them. The only issue he has is with people. He is very people shy and runs away from folks when they come near. He is getting a lot better, but it does take some time to be able to get near him to pick him up. He is becoming more trusting and coming closer to us every day, so he is on the road to improvement.

Coming soon are more pictures of Ulric with his black tongue, funky tail, and his small furry legs jetting him across the lawn. For now, here’s a pic of him.

Now where does the poop fit in to all this? Well, when transitioning to a new house, puppies have a tendency to lose some training and have loose stools. Combine that with a puppy’s need to go bathroom every 2-3 hours, there’s been my fair share of poo to cleanup. (The poo makes Leah sick, so yours truly gets the cleanup duty there) Being sick and cleaning up loose poo is a great combination for a weekend. Though Ulric is worth it.

As of 6:15pm on Thursday, April 26th 2007, Medb passed away.

Her condition continued to deteriorate and unless she had a constant stream of medication, would have more seizures. She was in a coma for a while in the UW-Madison Animal Hospital. She was going in and out of awareness and her CT scan showed a number of brain abnormalities. Her condition was genetic and very rare. There is some research that had been done on it in Germany. The symptoms of the condition match Medb’s and the breed matches too, Alaskan Husky. We believe that is the cause of her condition. To help further the research into the condition, she will undergo an autopsy to aid the understanding of the condition. So at least in her death, she will help others.

I miss her alot. I find some comfort in that she had a happy life and brought joy to our family and all she met.

Our furry family has expanded! And unfortunately the new addition is having problems. :-/

Medb’s Comes Home

In January, I went on a trip to White Wilderness for my birthday. The experience was amazing. When I was there, I saw a little puppy named Voodoo. On the last day of the trip, we arrived into the yard and were playing with the puppy litters that the operation was raising. One litter was only two puppies, Druid and Voodoo. Druid was an active, playful puppy. With the energy he had, he is going to be a wonderful sled dog. The other puppy, VooDoo, was shy, small, and did not want to come out to meet people. We managed to lift her out and hold her while Druid was being his hyper self and playing with a sock covered water bottle. She was so small, my hand could almost cover her up. Here’s what it looked like:

Click picture for larger version

I decided to take her with me. She wasn’t going to be able to become a sled dog due to confidence issues. So with Leah’s approval, we have a new puppy.

When we got her home, we decided to rename her to Morrigan Medb, or just Medb for short. (Pronounced Maeve, more info on the name over at the Wikipedia entry for Medb)

Medb in the House

She grew fast and is a sweetheart. We knew she would be a challenge to raise since she had confidence issues. She was very shy, but came out of her shell quickly at the house. Sebastian is a great big brother and corrects and cares for her. She loves meeting other dogs and people now and did great in her puppy class. Here’s a great shot of her from her graduation day.

Click picture for larger version

Medb’s Health

Unfortunately Medb does have some health problems. She has some brain damage, so she does not have complete control over her back legs. She has been managing it in her own special way. It just makes her much more special to us. Our vet loves her, but does not know how life will play out because of her mental capacity. She is playful though through it all.

Medb and the Emergency Room…

On Easter and our 2nd wedding aniversary, Medb started having seizures. She had one while I was taking a quick name. Leah heard some weird noises, and found Medb on the floor having urinated on herself. She was very disoriented, but recovered ok. Then later in the day, she had a full seizure when she stood up to get a drink. When she was walking over, she locked up and fellover. She came out of it ok, but she also had some fluid in her lungs from what we could hear. :-/

Leah called the emergency vet and they recommended bringing her in. They took her, did some tests, and recommended we admit her for a few days while they tried to stop the seizures and remove the fluid from her lungs. They were not able to determine a cause of the seizures, but thought it was something to do with her brain damage. It was a hard and difficult time for Leah and myself. She is such a sweet puppy and it kills me to see her so drugged up, she can’t move a muscle. The fear of losing her was hard to take too. The vet said she was high risk and were not sure how long she would last.

Here’s what she looked like when we went to go visit her at the emergency vet.

Click picture for larger version

When she came home, she could not move for a long while until she adjusted to the medications. We had to hold her head up when she ate or when she drank. The good news was that she was recovering. After a time, we were able to take her to the dog park again and she loved it. She was walking and playing like all was normal.

Regression

The last few days, she has been having more seizures. She is having about 3-4 a day and they are full gran maul seizures. The horrible thing is there is nothing we can really do. Our vet gave us more meds to see if upping to dose will help. It is all guesswork though until we can get her to the neurologist at the UW-Madison Vet school on May 8th. Hopefully they can give us an idea on what she is going through and what to expect as she grows up. She deserves the best life she can get. I hope it is a long and happy one.

More updates as they develop.

Greetings from IMified! This is a test to see how blogging through IM works. For more details, see www.imified.com

Howdy All,

At work we just received a copy of Microsoft Office 2007. In fact, I felt really odd running over to DoIT to pick up a copy of it. I was actually excited to try out a Microsoft product. Yeppers, Tim the Linux guy was excited to try out Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Shocking isn’t it?

I did a full install of Office 2007 and for my first daring adventure into Office 2007 land, Outlook was my target. The testing also gave me the chance to test out the latest version of my absolute favorite Outlook add-on ever, Clear Context. It made working with Outlook empowering. Heck, it made email empowering. Nothing on Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux yet has matched the power it gives email.

Clear Context for those not yet familiar with it, allows you to act quickly one each email that comes into your mailbox. You can quickly sort them into folders called Topics, you can move the email to your calendar as an appointment, you can delegate it to someone else, and a lot more. If you know about the Getting Things Done mentality of organization, it will be a great tool for you to use.

Excited to see what Office 2007 and Clear Context 3 had in store, I installed them on my Windows machine and went to town. I’ll highlight two of the new features that I found. The core of Clear Context is still there and still is as ever easy to use. (See my earlier post on Clear Context 2)

Related View

The first thing I see when opening an email is the first new feature, Related View. Upon opening an email, it shows you the emails associated with it. I think it uses the subject lines as a clue when listing the related emails, but it can also list related tasks and appointments. Very handy information to have on hand when working on a long email chain in a project.

Related View In Action

Unsubscribe

The other new option that sticks out is the Unsubscribe button. If you don’t want anything to do with an email chain, no problem. Click on the unsubscribe button, and you’ll see no more of that chain. It’s a hand feature to have.

Unsubscribe, oh how I love the…

So far using Clear Context has been smooth, with only some minor glitches so far. The Unsubscribe feature by default moves all the unwanted messages to a general unsubscribed folder instead of the Topic folder if the email has a Topic assigned to it. You can change that in the settings, but it feels like it would be better on by default.

Another unsubscribe oddity takes place when you try to resubscribe to an email chain. When you go into the Unsubscribed folder and select one to resubscribe in, it’s not clear how to resubscribe to it. The trick is to click the Unsubscribe button again to resubscribe to it. Feels like a weird double negative.

Also when you resubscribe to it, you are presented with this message box.

Where are the yes/no buttons?

When asking a Yes/No question it’s nice to have Yes/No buttons. If you hit OK or the close button it automatically resubscribes you to the conversation, so there really is no way to say no here. It also does not move the messages out of the Unsubscribed folder. That has to be done manually. I do hope that gets fixed soon. It’s weird having subscribed chains in the Unsubscribed folder.

The last quirk with the Unsubscribe is the message box when you initially unsubscribe from a thread. It says that is moves the message to the Unsubscribed folder and not the Topic folder if that option is set. It is a bit confusing.

Misleading text…

Conclusion

I just started using Clear Context 3 on my computer, but I am already extraordinarily happy with it. Overall, I give it an A-. The Unsubscribe feature has some polishing to do, but it is the first release of version 3. I am sure that will be fixed in later versions and then it will be a full on A+.

Heck, it’s enough to make me have Windows be my fulltime desktop over Linux. Yes, it’s that powerful of a piece of software. If there was a Linux version of this for Evolution, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. Until then… Yes, the Linux guy will have a Windows desktop so he can use Clear Context.

There’s been a few changes on the Tim front recently. A new job, 2 new
cats, and one ever-present sleeping problem. I’ll fill folks in more on
the new job and cats later.

Now, let’s talk about the build up & let down of the sleep study.

I have not been able to sleep well for some time now. It has
progressively worsened. Even when I was in top shape, I would be wiped
out and could barley stand. Now when I go to sleep, I wake up more
tired then when I went to bed. It rather defeats the purpose of sleep.
I fight going to sleep now because I know it will be of no help. Rather
annoying really.

Leah mentioned to me a while back after she got a sleep study that I
should see about getting one too. I snore a lot when I sleep and have
spasms too when sleeping. That could be the things that are keeping me
from sleeping. Makes sense really. Sleep apnea will make you feel tired
and drained and sleep doesn’t seem to help at all.

I went to the doctor and he mentioned that my airway looks a bit
smaller than normal so that could be a factor. He also mentioned when
folks get put on a cpap machine to help them sleep, the difference is
striking. This fact was confirmed by my Uncle Mike who mentioned that
using the machine was like night and day.

Needless to say, I was excited. I wanted to actually be able to sleep
well at night and wake up refreshed for once. I scheduled a sleep study
to get evaluated and setup with a cpap machine. That study took place
last night. This morning, I felt horribly let down.

I went into the study last night extremely tired. I was exhausted on
Saturday and went to take a nap at 7pm. That nap turned in to a full on
sleep and I woke up around 6am on Sunday. I was still tired. More tired
then I was when I went to take the bloody nap. Because I had the sleep
study, I had to stay awake during the day. That was a big battle for
me. It’s hard to stay awake when your entire body is screaming to
sleep. Somehow, I managed to make to the study.

I was really excited to have the study done. The tech wiring me up was
very friendly and had me try out a cpap machine when I was awake just
to try it.  Wow. When I had the machine on it was so much easier to
breath. My nose always clogs no matter what I do, and it was amazing
being able to breath that deeply without having to force the air in. I
had it on for a few minutes and I could feel myself relaxing at the
ease of breathing it had granted me.

Though I had to take it off before going to bed. They need to measure
how you sleep without the mask to see if you qualify for one. I forgot
to ask what makes someone qualify for one. So wired up I tried to get
to sleep expecting them to wake me up in the middle of the night to
tell me I qualified to hook me up to the wonder that is the cpap
machine.

Getting to sleep took a while. This was the worst time to have a
migraine, so of course one shows its damn head. I tried to get to sleep
on my own, but that was futile. Finally I asked for some pain killers
and after about an hour after taking them, they kicked in. I was
finally off to sleep.

The tech then wakes me up hours later. Not to fit me with the cpap
machine, but to wake me up and tell me the study is over. I made it
through the night and didn’t qualify for the machine. I did have some
apnea, but it was apparently mild and did not qualify me for a machine.
Though over the years, the tech said it could get worse and then I
would require a machine. With my current state, the insurance most
likely would not cover the machine.

Bloody hell. That was the worse thing to wake up to. All this build up
to get the cpap machine to only find out I don’t bloody qualify for
one. Then what is making my sleep so crappy? Why do I wake up so
freaking tired? I’ve tried just about everything I can find and nothing
works. When I have been thin, fat, in shape, out of shape, on a regular
schedule, taking sleep medicine, trying to relax a lot before bed,
nothing works! I always feel tired. So hearing that I don’t qualify
really hurt. I’m sure the tech saw I was really disappointed. He
mentioned some ways I could try to find a cpap machine on my own. I
might be able to use Leah’s, but I am sure she needs it more.

What makes the results even more disappointing was the nights sleep was
not even close to a normal nights sleep. It was much shorter due to the
migraine and my nose was actually not stuffy for once (happens only
about twice a month it seems). I hope there will be a follow up study
once they analyze my results more, but I don’t want to get my hopes up.

I’ll have to wait to the follow-up appointment and ask the doc what options I have open. Something has to be able to help. :-/

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