I slept well enough two nights ago with no breathing strips or anything, or at least as well as a 60-year-old can sleep. Due to there still being swelling and scarring in my nose that's going to take weeks to heal, I had a little bit of buildup interfering with my sleep last time around, so I don't quite have as much energy as yesterday, but I still have enough to function. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to put gauze tape over my nose to force myself to breathe through my mouth the next time I sleep, but I'm definitely going to put the humidifier on. The CPAP has its own humidifier, but since I can't use that until the 12th, I'll humidify the room.

I've been throwing saline up there a lot. I don't want to be too forceful trying to get boogers out because I don't want to cause any bleeding.

This ordeal has taught me a valuable lesson, and that's that having to temporarily go without the CPAP isn't the crisis I thought it would be. I may have to elevate myself, which I don't prefer, and block my nose so I subconsciously breathe out of my mouth instead of my nose, but it can be done.

According to my research, losing 30 to 35 pounds might get me off CPAP therapy altogether. There are no guarantees, but I think there might be a good chance. The problem is the Hashimoto's and my age. I would have to be hungry every single day of my life. There's no taking a day off, even if it was just once a week, because that's all it would take in my case to undo all my hard work. Aside from the fear of how they affect my levo, I would have to have 1200 calories a day every day for the better part of a year or longer to get my weight down to 125ish. Then I could jump to 1400 calories a day, but even that, on a day when I happen to be hungrier than usual or I'm craving some serious variety, could be a challenge to sustain every single day for the rest of my life. Therefore, I decided to do an experiment before and if I invest so much time and discomfort into this. I agree that if I could do it, the health benefits would be great. Not only might I get out of CPAP therapy, but it would help my blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, mobility, etc., so rather than jump in with 125 lb in mind, I thought I would see if I could bring it to 155 (I'm 162). Then what I would do would be to jump up to 1400 calories if I could get my weight down there and see if it really stays down or not. Again, no sense in slaving through dieting if it's not going to get me anywhere. I just don't know when to start.

Yesterday was the last day of eye drops. My eye infection, along with my yeast infection, seems to be all cleared up.

Anyway, I still don't want to get my hopes up where sleep is concerned until I know if I can go one solid week sleeping well. That doesn't mean I'm not still older and won't wake up here and there, but I want to go that long without breathing issues before I really start getting overly excited. It was funny, though, because preparing for bed was so easy the last couple of nights. I brushed my teeth and asked myself, is that it? Normally I have to brush my teeth, give my nose an extra washing to strip it of oils, put my nose strip on, take a steroid spray, take an antihistamine, prepare the CPAP, etc. It was like preparing for a battle I knew I wasn't going to win.

It's been so wonderful not having to worry about my schedule or appointments in the immediate future! I was starting to feel like I was at the doctor's more than I was at home.

Tomorrow will be the first fun day since surgery, and I'm looking forward to spoiling myself and being really bad, lol. I've got some coffee-flavored ice cream coming, some white zinfandel wine, and a couple of candles that were on sale—Spring Honeysuckle and Tropical Serenade.

A real pisser is the local dental place I called to ask if they did mouth guards for sleep apnea, who said no. Then they called while I was trying to hit the road, but I couldn’t get to the phone in time. This is the second time since surgery that the phone has prevented me from hitting the road. I’m sure they wanted to sell me something, which pisses me off since that’s abusing my number in a sense, but just in case they made a mistake, I tried to call back. Only the woman I talked to said she didn’t know who called me, so I said fuck it and blocked their number. Even if they were right next door at Toni’s place and free, I’m not interested in another 10- to 12-appointment marathon. As it is, I still have at least two appointments to get my crown at the end of the month or so. I’m not kidding when I say I don’t want to deal with anything unless I absolutely have to. I am so sick of all the fucking suffering and appointments I’ve had, and I don’t know that a mouth guard would make that much of a difference if there really is something cursing my sleep. I can breathe now, which is great, but that doesn’t mean other things won’t happen to disrupt my sleep.

Another thing that’s been pissing me off lately is Alexa. I hate the changes they forced on us. She worked fine for a decade just the way she was, but now she stays lit several seconds—and in some cases several minutes—after I ask or tell her something, and that annoys the fuck out of me with the one in the bedroom, so I had to tape over the light ring. It also annoys me because I have to wait until it goes out before I can even talk to Tom. It’s only a matter of time before I’ll no longer be able to have her read my books, and will have to either read with my eyes or consider dropping Kindle Unlimited for Audible. I’ll probably just read with my eyes. That way, I don’t have the accents to deal with and can go at my own pace.

Anyway, swollen turbinates were almost certainly my main problem. On the insides of the outer sides of the nose, I noticed these thick, callus-like things building up. I knew they hadn’t always been there, but didn’t know what they were—just that it was odd and probably shouldn’t be there.

Also, Rhonda finally called in my Diflucan.

I not only have nail ridges, but I noticed some pitting, especially in my thumbs, and I wonder if I could have a mild case of psoriasis, another autoimmune disorder, but luckily, it’s nothing like Hashimoto’s.

Going to try sleeping flat, but that can be bad for sleep apnea, no matter if you breathe from your nose or mouth, so we’ll just have to see how it goes. It’s still hard to believe that I’m suddenly going to sleep better and that my sleep isn’t cursed, but if it’s a little better, I’ll take it. A little is better than nothing. I don’t expect to have perfect energy every day, but if I can have it two-thirds of the time instead of a third of the time or less, that would be great.

I’m loving ViviBook! It showed up in my Facebook feed. You give them prompts, and they make books out of your prompts. It isn’t that this is suddenly a new thing, but I like the way it breaks it up into 15 short chapters followed by an epilogue, so you don’t have these overly long books. They take about an hour and a half to read. Some terms and descriptions are a little repetitive and silly, but it otherwise does a pretty good job. I’ve only read two of my stories so far after feeding it the synopses, and one of them was pretty close to how I originally wrote it, but the other one was a little more off. It had a lot more supernatural/fantasy in it. Anyway, it makes everything from the story to the titles to the covers. It’s a relatively new site. I can’t find an app for them, though.

Anyway… our five-week winter is over, and my candles are smelling good again!

On the way to get the stents removed. Hopefully. Tom missed a call from the doctor's nurse yesterday because he was dumb enough not to take his phone outside with him when he went out to seed the grass. As usual, no message was left, nothing on the portal. I worried all fucking night about what she wanted. My biggest fear is having to reschedule a time-sensitive appointment to a farther location with a 15-year-old electric car. 

Fuck mouth guards! I just want a break from all the appointments! If I could do daily appointments, I'd be out there working. Besides, the local place doesn't do mouth guards for sleep apnea anyway. After three doctors have mentioned it, especially the way my lungs were so tight after gallbladder surgery, I don't doubt I have sleep apnea. But my nose was definitely making it worse than it is, and I think—or at least I hope—I can at least sleep without the CPAP.

After only making it halfway through my antibiotics, I had to stop because they gave me a horrible case of the runs. I even got under 160 lb, although barely and only for five minutes. Been sleeping better than I thought I would, though. No funny throat sounds in a few days. Just a bit of snoring when I accidentally rolled onto my back. Still tired, though, and wonder how much is surgery versus sleep apnea versus TSH versus the oxy and clonazepam I've been taking before bed.

Well, as long as they don't keep adding appointments, I can take a break from all that tonight. I can see him wanting one last follow-up, but hopefully that will be a month or so out. I just want a break!

Been shoving some leftover Monistat cream up in me, which has helped a bit with the yeast infection since Rhonda's idiot staff fucked up and I haven't gotten my Diflucan yet. My new inhaler was called in, though, so hopefully that will be ready, too.

Six years ago, I loved weekends because Tom would be home. Now I love them because it's the only time I know I'm not going to have an appointment or any health work to do. During the week, even when I'm not at an appointment, I still have to watch for calls.

Later...

On the way back from stent removal, and wow! Just wow! I can already breathe so much better, and I'm not even fully healed! The real test won't be until I'm healed and sleeping, and while it looks good, it could be weeks before I'm fully healed. He called in Diflucan for me—hopefully to the right Walgreens—but we can have it transferred if we need to.

So he sprayed numbing stuff in my nose, cut the stitches I didn't even know were holding the stents in (the inner ones dissolved), and then pulled them out. Nothing hurt, but the lidocaine he sprayed in my nose tasted nasty as it went back down my throat. Then he sucked out boogers and other crusty debris like they used to with my ear (yeah, I know it sounds gross), and I’m to hold off on going back to the steroid spray for now but make sure I use saline a few times a day. Meanwhile, I’ll go back in a month, or possibly sooner if I start getting stuffy and it needs to be cleaned again. Going to try sleeping flat, but not with the CPAP, of course.

I have more to write about, but it’s going to take a while before I can get this journal caught up. I’m still pretty tired.

Still sleeping elevated because I don't want to be tempted to flip onto my stomach. I need to heal more before I do that. A lot more. This is going to take several weeks. It's a long, slow process. I'm continuing to feel drained but slept a little better last night, even if it wasn't as long as I should have. I haven't done it the last couple of nights, but before that I was making these weird sounds in my throat in my sleep, but I think that was connected to the surgery.

I was sitting in the middle of the yard of my childhood home in a dream I had. I noticed how private it still was and that no one could see me, at least from some directions. There was a section of the yard that had been dug out. A sad sense of nostalgia came over me as I looked up the small hill where my old swing set used to be. I wanted to blog about that but realized I couldn't. Then I woke up and was like, hey, wait a minute—was I alive in that dream? It seemed like quite some time had gone by because I felt saddened by the state of the planet.