Good news and bad news

[lydy]

Good news: I had a great pool party (despite never getting to play Zar). Felicia gave me a stuffed tiger that _purrs_. So great. Matt (Dean) did point out the purring was inaccurate. Tigers (and lions) can only purr on the exhale, whereas domestic cats and cougars can purr on the inhale and the exhale, so the little stuffed tiger was purring like a domestic cat. Evidently, there's some sort of thing associated with roaring. You can either roar, or purr on the inhale, but not both. Don't ask me, I didn't do it. Any gate, inaccurate or not, it purrs! I love it love it love it.

Bad news: I just called my insurance company to find out about getting sleep study. I know I have sleep apnea, I had it years ago, and I've put back all the weight I lost, and I can feel myself obstructing as I start to fall asleep, so yeah, I need a new machine and mask and all that jazz. So, my insurance, which is the insurance provided to me By My Company, covers sleep studies as part of major hospitalization, which is to say, I have a $3500 deductible. Sleep studies run in the general range of $2000, a CPAP machine runs in the neighborhood of $800, and mask, tubing, etc. another $200 or so. So basically, it'd be out of pocket. I am...breathless. And annoyed.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Why not just buy the machine and skip the study?

K.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I may end up doing that, but they make it hard. In the first place, I don't know what pressure would be most effective. And you can't just buy a machine or mask without a prescription, and you can't get a prescription without a study. I can do one of two things. I can resurrect my old machine, and go with whatever pressure I had before (which would be better than nothing) but it's really old, and as I said, I'm unsure about the pressure. The other thing I can do is cruise Craig's list for an APAP, which does auto adjusting (which isn't as good as having a hand-titrated pressure from a study, but would at least be responding to what I am like now, not what I was like six or seven years ago). There's still the problem of the mask. Used to be, you could buy those without a prescription, but I understand a lot of the places that do that are now requiring a prescription. I suppose I could send them my old study from umpty-ump years ago...actually, I'm not sure precisely what they require, since the last time I bought a mask, prescriptions were not required, and I was going through my insurance, anyway. Masks wear out a lot quicker than machines, and I'd be loath to use a second-hand mask. That's still in the neighborhood of $500 all told, machine and new mask and all that. Eventually, I'll look into it. But at the moment, I've decided that sulking is my best option.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'd expect an old study is good enough. You've been faithfully using your equipment all these years, and now you need some pieces replaced.

B

[guppiecat]

This displays my ignorance, but can't you figure out the titration yourself over time? Just start where you were the first time around and increase or decrease it until your sleep improves.

It'd take longer, but it's not like you're unfamiliar with the science involved.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Well, an APAP would make that easier. The thing is, when you're asleep, you're, you know, asleep. Once you eliminate the major stuff, there's still this thing called RERAs, which stands for Respiratory Effort Related Arousals. They're little, tiny obstructions that just wake you up. Not very much. A couple of seconds. Not long enough to remember. And people, including me, are remarkably unreliable reporters of their own sleep. When I had really bad sleep apnea, I thought I slept very, very soundly. I didn't, but that was what I remembered.

Yes, I could do that to some extent, but I'd really rather, you know, have good empirical results and stuff. Which I totally can't afford. Even an APAP won't respond to RERAs. It really only notices apneas. It can distinguish between obstructive and central apneas, for the most part, but that's about it. It can kind of sense hypopneas, but without O2 monitoring, it's not real good either. (I can explain all that but really, do you care?)

Part of the problem, of course, is I know too much for my own good. I should just get a used APAP and be done with it.

[guppiecat]

Could you detect it by filming yourself sleeping at night and watching the video (on fast forward, presumably) the next day?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Nope. Arousals aren't that obvious. Really, you need EEG electrodes and airflow monitoring to detect RERAs. You need O2 monitoring to detect hypopneas. Maybe I'm just too wedded to a real sleep study, since that's what I do. But there's a lot of data we collect that you just can't get any other way.

I do wonder about sneaking into the lab on Saturday when they're closed and running a sleep study on myself in secret. I might even be able to get away with it. It'd be a very weird thing to do. And if I got caught, I can't even imagine the type of trouble I could get in. On the one hand, I wouldn't be using up anything particularly expensive, for the most part. On the other hand...yeah, a world of trouble, pretty likely.

[guppiecat]

Yeah. Not worth the risk.

However, you might want to volunteer yourself as a training guinea pig.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Well, a good sulk has its place in the emotional ecosystem, too. Useful for figuring out which options bug you most.