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

[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.