Let's not do that again

So, yeah...I would like to avoid nights like this one again, at all costs.

Thanks to my wonderful, beautiful, beloved CPAP machine, I am able to sleep soundly after many years of having a very bad sleep problem. I've been on the CPAP machine for about two years now...heck, I depend on it to be able to sleep at all, and to make it through the night without a heart attack. :) My brother is in the same boat as I, only not quite so dependent.

However, one of the less pleasant side-effects my brother and I discovered is that our sleep is SO deep, we end up not moving very much in our sleep once we've drifted off courtesy of our beloved machines. This is generally not a problem, as most people can generally pick a comfortable position before drifting off to sleep. When we each first began learning to use our equipment, we quickly learned that a few positions seem comfortable when laying down, but can quickly degenerate into bad, bad uncomfortable - with a limb, usually a leg, going numb or being in pain from being ill-positioned.

Back at home I have body-length pillows I use to keep from rolling over or moving around much after I'm set for the night. Not so here. So, back to the original world-class freak-out now that I've intro'd it so heavily.

Apparently last night, while I was asleep, my back decided it had had just about all it could take in this one position, and I rolled forward in my sleep. This was not a good thing, as I rolled forward and onto my right arm in a very awkward position. And then, apparently I just slept for a very long time. Maybe 4 hours into being asleep, I woke up quite startled...and realized I was uncomfortably on top of my arm. I tried to move off of it, but I got NOTHING from my arm. So I rolled over, and when I stood up, to my horror, my arm was a deep, deep purple, and nothing but a dead limb. As I stood up, it swung limply in front of me with absolutely zero muscle response. I grasped the arm with my left hand, and I may as well been grabbing a giant sausage for as lively as it felt, as much of a dead weight as it was, and as unable to feel the grasping as I was.

Interestingly enough, this was not the freak-out moment for the night. :-) I managed to RELATIVELY calmly spend 10 minutes waking my arm back up and restoring circulation. I got the first bit of response to my shoulder after a minute, biceps after a couple of minutes, major muscle groups in general after 3, and finally finger control before 4 minutes were up.(big clock in the bedroom...good way to keep track). I then pumped my arm and hands to keep the circulation going, went to take some heart-safe aspirin and a small piece of fruit to accompany it into my empty stomach, and felt my arm nearly fully restored.

Then, the weird sensation began to spread from my arm on outward through my body, very slowly...across my chest, down my back, etc. I couldn't explain the tightening, oppressive, at times tingly, at other times painful sensation that was spreading from my shoulder outwards...and I hoped that it wasn't something like a bunch of clotted or Roleauxe'd blood from the no-circulation arm making it back into my system. Now, for having handled the previous paragraph's events in a measured and deliberate manner, I was surprisingly panicky about this sensation. World-class freak out, I suppose would describe how that felt. No yelling or flailing about or incoherent muttering or much of all that kind of stuff...but definitely an internal freak-out feeling.

On the BRIGHT side...I now have access to a home ECG monitoring kit, and my parents heard me up and about for the second half of my incident, came out to calm me down, and took my ECG. As opposed to my two triggered panic attacks in Ruston that led to needing to go get my heart checked, now that I have the medicine more balanced, there was nothing but a slightly elevated heart rate to show for this freak-out. So, trial-by-fire of the new balance of the medications, I suppose...and it seems to have worked.

If at all possible, I'd like to avoid this much testing of new medicine plans in the foreseeable future. :-)


--
The Old Fool

“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell.


*NOTE: I reserve the rights to all the original postings in this blog. Do not use without permission and/or full attribution.

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