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May. 22nd, 2017 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm glad we went to the viewing. We hadn't seen Mary and her husband (also named Scott) for quite a long time. Mary shared a house with Scott and his brother during college, and her husband moved into that house when my Scott moved out.
We spent most of our time talking to a third college friend, Jim, who also lived in that house and who is Mary's cousin. Jim's kind of responsible for me and Scott meeting in the first place. We mostly talked games. He's been playing that Pandemic version that can only be played once but that takes a couple dozen longish sessions to get through. He says it's a lot of fun and very difficult to master. He compared the monetary investment to buying a videogame that one only expects to play once or twice. He also commented that he's pretty sure that the reason his tabletop RPG group is stable is that none of them have kids. Which makes sense.
We picked up dinner at Plum Market on our way home. Scott got a salad and some mac 'n' cheese. We got some sushi for Cordelia and seem to have chosen well enough for her to eat it all. I got an assortment from the hot buffet. Most of it was just barely okay. There's one dish that I took a small amount of that turned out to be really, really good, but I was worried that it might have hidden dangers for me or even just have flavor I didn't like. If I'd been able to sample it first, I'd probably have taken just that and the steamed vegetables.
Scott is expecting to have to work late tonight, so he stopped at the center and cancelled Cordelia's PT appointment for this evening. The last time she was in, the therapist said that she might be ready to be discharged, so the hope is that we won't need to make up the appointment. I did mention that it was feasible for me to get her there and home again, but Scott wasn't keen on that.
I see my primary care doctor on Thursday. I need to make a list of things to talk to her about. I suspect that my difficulties sleeping will end up high on the list. Those are at least 50% scheduling (family obligations, medications, meals and reflux, Scott and Cordelia needing to be able to do things that are mildly noisy but enough to keep me awake) issues, but there's a good chunk that relates to the c-PAP and even more that relates to anxiety and to other physical issues.
I seem to be sleeping much less deeply with the c-PAP, and that means that I'm getting up to use the bathroom more (I actually do very much need to when I do). I'm having major problems falling asleep, taking an hour to an hour and a half at the beginning of the night and at least half an hour each time after that. If I slept all of the time that I was in bed, apart from the ten minutes right after Scott's alarm when we cuddle, I'd be getting seven hours of sleep. Because of the waking and not being able to get back to sleep, I'm generally getting four to five. I can function on seven hours a night for a while without getting ill. The time stretches a lot if I'm able to catch up on sleep over the weekend. Four to five hours a night is something I can only handle for a day or two before I start to hurt and to have trouble thinking.
The day generally goes like this:
3 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. I wake and use the bathroom.
5-ish a.m. Scott's alarm goes off. I take my levothyroxine and use the bathroom. Then we cuddle until his alarm goes off again.
6 a.m. Scott leaves the house. It's 50-50 whether or not I'm asleep then.
6:30 Cordelia and I get up. I spend the next half an hour getting her medication and her breakfast. She really wants me awake and with her until she leaves the house at 7:50. In order to manage that, I drink black tea and eat breakfast.
7:50 Cordelia leaves, and I'm too awake to sleep (also, if I lie down, I will be up every twenty minutes to pee). This early in the day, reflux isn't an issue even if I've just eaten.
11:00 I start to feel like maybe I could sleep.
12:00 Lunch and medication time. If I lie down after lunch, reflux is potentially an issue.
2:00 At this point, I'm having trouble staying awake.
3:10 Cordelia comes home. If I'm napping, she worries and needs to check on me (and get a hug) every twenty minutes or so.
4-ish Scott gets home. He needs to shower. He starts playing videos and podcasts on his laptop. If they're loud enough for him to hear them while the water's running, they're loud enough that I can follow every word. For the rest of the day, until Scott goes to bed himself (11:30-ish and always with vast complaining about how he's not getting enough sleep), there will be that level of noise, either from his laptop or from the TV.
6-ish I start trying to figure out what I can eat for dinner. I take my dinner medications.
7-ish Scott and Cordelia start thinking about dinner.
9-ish Cordelia starts getting ready for bed. Sometimes she showers. Either way, the bathroom is occupied for at least half an hour and sometimes as long as an hour.
10-ish Cordelia turns out her light, and I can start getting ready for bed. I take my bedtime medications.
10:30-ish I suggest to Scott that it's well past the time when he should start getting ready for bed. He agrees but wants just a little time to finish whatever he's playing/watching.
11:30 I use the bathroom one last time, and we finally turn out our lights.
12:30 I get up for the first time that night. I will not have slept at all before that. Sometimes, I'm lucky and fall asleep right after. Sometimes, I take more than thirty minutes.
The biggest changes are how long I take to fall asleep, the 3 a.m. waking, and almost never getting back to sleep after Scott gets up. That last used to happen, at most, once a week. Now, it's rare that I go back to sleep.
Sleeping needs to happen at least two hours after I've had more than a little water and at least three hours after lunch and at least four hours after dinner. Some of my medications have timing related to food or to other medications or to earlier doses of that same medication. I have dry mouth issues due to one of my meds that I can only address by drinking water frequently (Biotene is horrifically vile, and gum isn't an option. Hard candies... well, I can't have the sugar free versions and need to limit my sugar intake.)
It's going to be worse when Cordelia starts high school because she'll need to catch the bus around 7 a.m. Even if I can get her making her own breakfast again, I'll still have to get up to give her her medication. I suspect that, at least for the first few weeks, she's going to want moral support which will mean needing to be awake until she leaves for school.
I just looked at the list of WIP that I used to follow on FFnet and discovered that I haven't checked on any of them in almost five years. I didn't realize it had been that long since I was reading fic regularly enough to keep going with that. I didn't have a FFnet account at that point, so I just kept an offline list with the url of the most recent chapter and the date of the last update. After two or three years of no updates, I'd gradually stop checking (unless the story was just that good...).
We spent most of our time talking to a third college friend, Jim, who also lived in that house and who is Mary's cousin. Jim's kind of responsible for me and Scott meeting in the first place. We mostly talked games. He's been playing that Pandemic version that can only be played once but that takes a couple dozen longish sessions to get through. He says it's a lot of fun and very difficult to master. He compared the monetary investment to buying a videogame that one only expects to play once or twice. He also commented that he's pretty sure that the reason his tabletop RPG group is stable is that none of them have kids. Which makes sense.
We picked up dinner at Plum Market on our way home. Scott got a salad and some mac 'n' cheese. We got some sushi for Cordelia and seem to have chosen well enough for her to eat it all. I got an assortment from the hot buffet. Most of it was just barely okay. There's one dish that I took a small amount of that turned out to be really, really good, but I was worried that it might have hidden dangers for me or even just have flavor I didn't like. If I'd been able to sample it first, I'd probably have taken just that and the steamed vegetables.
Scott is expecting to have to work late tonight, so he stopped at the center and cancelled Cordelia's PT appointment for this evening. The last time she was in, the therapist said that she might be ready to be discharged, so the hope is that we won't need to make up the appointment. I did mention that it was feasible for me to get her there and home again, but Scott wasn't keen on that.
I see my primary care doctor on Thursday. I need to make a list of things to talk to her about. I suspect that my difficulties sleeping will end up high on the list. Those are at least 50% scheduling (family obligations, medications, meals and reflux, Scott and Cordelia needing to be able to do things that are mildly noisy but enough to keep me awake) issues, but there's a good chunk that relates to the c-PAP and even more that relates to anxiety and to other physical issues.
I seem to be sleeping much less deeply with the c-PAP, and that means that I'm getting up to use the bathroom more (I actually do very much need to when I do). I'm having major problems falling asleep, taking an hour to an hour and a half at the beginning of the night and at least half an hour each time after that. If I slept all of the time that I was in bed, apart from the ten minutes right after Scott's alarm when we cuddle, I'd be getting seven hours of sleep. Because of the waking and not being able to get back to sleep, I'm generally getting four to five. I can function on seven hours a night for a while without getting ill. The time stretches a lot if I'm able to catch up on sleep over the weekend. Four to five hours a night is something I can only handle for a day or two before I start to hurt and to have trouble thinking.
The day generally goes like this:
3 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. I wake and use the bathroom.
5-ish a.m. Scott's alarm goes off. I take my levothyroxine and use the bathroom. Then we cuddle until his alarm goes off again.
6 a.m. Scott leaves the house. It's 50-50 whether or not I'm asleep then.
6:30 Cordelia and I get up. I spend the next half an hour getting her medication and her breakfast. She really wants me awake and with her until she leaves the house at 7:50. In order to manage that, I drink black tea and eat breakfast.
7:50 Cordelia leaves, and I'm too awake to sleep (also, if I lie down, I will be up every twenty minutes to pee). This early in the day, reflux isn't an issue even if I've just eaten.
11:00 I start to feel like maybe I could sleep.
12:00 Lunch and medication time. If I lie down after lunch, reflux is potentially an issue.
2:00 At this point, I'm having trouble staying awake.
3:10 Cordelia comes home. If I'm napping, she worries and needs to check on me (and get a hug) every twenty minutes or so.
4-ish Scott gets home. He needs to shower. He starts playing videos and podcasts on his laptop. If they're loud enough for him to hear them while the water's running, they're loud enough that I can follow every word. For the rest of the day, until Scott goes to bed himself (11:30-ish and always with vast complaining about how he's not getting enough sleep), there will be that level of noise, either from his laptop or from the TV.
6-ish I start trying to figure out what I can eat for dinner. I take my dinner medications.
7-ish Scott and Cordelia start thinking about dinner.
9-ish Cordelia starts getting ready for bed. Sometimes she showers. Either way, the bathroom is occupied for at least half an hour and sometimes as long as an hour.
10-ish Cordelia turns out her light, and I can start getting ready for bed. I take my bedtime medications.
10:30-ish I suggest to Scott that it's well past the time when he should start getting ready for bed. He agrees but wants just a little time to finish whatever he's playing/watching.
11:30 I use the bathroom one last time, and we finally turn out our lights.
12:30 I get up for the first time that night. I will not have slept at all before that. Sometimes, I'm lucky and fall asleep right after. Sometimes, I take more than thirty minutes.
The biggest changes are how long I take to fall asleep, the 3 a.m. waking, and almost never getting back to sleep after Scott gets up. That last used to happen, at most, once a week. Now, it's rare that I go back to sleep.
Sleeping needs to happen at least two hours after I've had more than a little water and at least three hours after lunch and at least four hours after dinner. Some of my medications have timing related to food or to other medications or to earlier doses of that same medication. I have dry mouth issues due to one of my meds that I can only address by drinking water frequently (Biotene is horrifically vile, and gum isn't an option. Hard candies... well, I can't have the sugar free versions and need to limit my sugar intake.)
It's going to be worse when Cordelia starts high school because she'll need to catch the bus around 7 a.m. Even if I can get her making her own breakfast again, I'll still have to get up to give her her medication. I suspect that, at least for the first few weeks, she's going to want moral support which will mean needing to be awake until she leaves for school.
I just looked at the list of WIP that I used to follow on FFnet and discovered that I haven't checked on any of them in almost five years. I didn't realize it had been that long since I was reading fic regularly enough to keep going with that. I didn't have a FFnet account at that point, so I just kept an offline list with the url of the most recent chapter and the date of the last update. After two or three years of no updates, I'd gradually stop checking (unless the story was just that good...).
