Written yesterday... On my way to what I hope will be my last ENT appointment. I'm writing in my notebook and will get this online later or tomorrow. I've got to remember to ask if returning to my steroid spray really is worth it or not, and mention my eyes. Lately, they've been more itchy than watery. Again, a problem I never had before surgery. The question is, would a doctor admit or deny if it's connected to surgery? 

Just passed today's accident. Wonder how many more miles we'll get before we hit another one, if not construction.

So, back to my eyes. I read that watery, itchy eyes can be a sign of glaucoma, but usually you have other symptoms with it that luckily I don't have.

On the way back, after quite a bit of waiting. Thank God for smartphones! The TV was annoying in the waiting room, and the exam room was chilly. The doctor sprayed that numbing stuff up my nose that makes my throat sore, scoped it, and said everything is healing well. There's no exposed bone or anything. Both ears look good, too. 

The problem is my eyes. He looked at them and said he saw a couple of things (I can't remember the medical terms he used) that weren't normal. He said he couldn't say if it was connected to whatever they used in my as they were prepping me for surgery because he didn't partake in that part.

I asked if I should go back on the Flonase, and he said I should for a year. However, since I'm a glaucoma suspect, he recommended seeing my glaucoma doctor, especially since some glaucoma docs are antsy about Flonase. I guess it can raise eye pressure. I hope my eyes won't be my next long-term problem! I don't think I have glaucoma setting in, but an ophthalmologist would know more about whatever is messing up my eyes than an ENT.

I asked him if the turbinates would grow back, and he said they could, but he highly doubted they would because he reduced them so much. This was a relief to hear!

At the end of our visit, I asked if he reads his Google reviews, telling him I wanted to give him a glowing review, and he seemed delighted by the idea. He said he sees about 30 patients a day, does surgery one day a week, yet with the thousands of patients he sees, he's lucky if he gets maybe three reviews. With a laugh, he added that some were mean. Yeah, LOL, I saw that. Anyway, I should never have to see the wonderful Dr. T again, even though he said he'd be there if I needed him.

We're at BK now. Tom's getting our order, and I'm in the car. I have the windows open to save on the battery, and while it's warm and humid, there's a pleasant breeze going, so it's okay.

Written this morning... Finally got some time to catch up on writing. Anyway, I'll miss my ENT because he's such a likable guy. He's unique for a doctor. I won't miss all the appointments, though. I just hope my eyes aren't going to be my next long-term problem, like I said, because I do still worry about being hit with something else that lasts 4 to 8 years, like most of my problems. At least that's the way it's been for over a decade now. If it is, then as long as I don't go blind, this is easier than not being able to breathe or sleep.

My overall sleep score has gone up due to being able to breathe better, and it's slowing the roll of my schedule, too. Where it's normally free-running, as they call it, it's more entrained, even though that doesn't mean my sleep disorder is cured. There's no cure for it. But I went from my days being an average of 1 hour and 20 minutes to 1 hour and 40 minutes to barely an hour. I'm also not sleeping as long, and I wonder if that's because I'm sleeping better. I may not be like I was in my twenties or thirties, but I'm managing to function.

Had a really weird experience a couple of days ago. My desk is white, and Tinkerbella's old bedding was gray. We used to use recycled paper for her bedding. I glanced down and saw what I first thought was a piece of bedding sitting on the bottom shelf. I don't know what to think, though, because the piece was the right texture and color, but a little long. It was almost L-shaped too, and there was a thin piece of tape or plastic on the end of it. I asked Tom if he thought it could be bedding, and he said that while he did find a couple of irregular-shaped pieces every now and then, he wasn't any more sure than I was as to what it could be. Sure was strange the way it suddenly appeared.

Ask me anything anonymously! It can be personal or not. It can be naughty or nice. I'm open to anything, and I'm not sensitive.

https://tellonym.me/user.jodilin

I've got mashed potatoes cooking in the slow cooker now. I added the usual ingredients... milk, butter, garlic salt, pepper, and rosemary. I hope I didn't overdo the rosemary. More came flying out of the bottle than expected. I tried to get some of it out, but there's still quite a bit.

My eyes have still been a little itchy, so I ordered some antihistamine eye drops from Amazon along with a set of 6 holographic nail polishes. Right now, I only have two sets of nail stickers left. I'll probably alternate between nail polish and nail stickers, but of course, the stickers will last longer. They're just more work to apply. I'm pretty good and fast at doing them, though, so I don't mind.

Originally, I thought I had a back injury and injured sciatica, but now I'm pretty sure it's caused by the waterbed. I saved and saved so I could have less back pain and more comfort. Well, I got the comfort, but now I'm right back to the back pain. Definitely going to have to deal with that, but most importantly, we've got to get my crown taken care of and then the refrigerator and toilet. The old refrigerator is still holding up, but only as a refrigerator. It can't freeze anymore, which is why we got the freezer. Once we get the new refrigerator, we'll move this freezer out into the lanai.

I had a dream that I was younger and dating another woman who wasn't very nice to me. We seemed to be in our 20s. We were at a fair when she showed me these giant spiders. They totally creeped me out, even though their bodies were kind of frog-like. At one point, she grabbed a handful and started chasing me with them.

Then I had a dream that I lived in a large, luxurious house somewhere. I was on the second floor when I heard giggling outside. The clock said it was 1:00 AM. I got up and looked out the window and saw three high school-age girls at the side of the road. Then I saw them come into our yard, snatch a cushion off one of our lounges, pull it out onto a patch of grass, and lie down on it. I had turned the light off so I could see outside better, but then I turned it on, hoping they would see me and run, although the dream ended then.

Then I had another dream about being on the second or third floor of an apartment building, but I'm not sure what that was about.

Here we go again with the bed and back issues. I have no regrets about getting a waterbed, but I totally regret getting a shallow soft-side with tubes. We have other more important things going on at the moment, like my crown, getting the new refrigerator, water filter, and dealing with the toilet, but as soon as we can ever get a break between things breaking, we talked about building a hard side. Buying a hard side would cost way more, so we realized we're better off having Lowe's cut wood to the size we want and doing it ourselves. I definitely want something deeper and a single full-wave bladder rather than tubes.

Just like with my previous mattresses that weren't waterbeds, there's a bit of a dent forming where I sleep. I don't think the black foam underneath is breaking down, but I think the foam in the cover could be. To boost me up a bit more, I wedged some memory foam between the black foam covering the tubes and the soft cover. Not sure if this is going to help my back, though. I've been waking up with lower back pain as the bed gets saggier and appears to be losing water when in fact the sides are actually stretching. Part of it could also be the foam breaking down. I'm a little worried that I might overheat this way, but we'll find out.

Damn, do I miss the old hard-side king-size waterbed I had in Arizona! It was so much easier to make as well. I just threw a piece of foam on top of it, then a cover sheet over that, and simply stuffed it down along the sides. You can put regular sheets on soft-sides, but because it's so soft and the mattress is only 8" thick, they slip and bunch.

They say it's going to be wetter this summer here. Oh, of course it will be. Now that my nose is done and I'm not suffocating awake, why not throw in more thunderstorms to wake me up with those instead? As it is, I'm pretty tired today because I was up longer than I wanted to be due to a 90-minute power failure. It would have been worse if it had happened the day before, though.

My eyes are still a little oozy and itchy, so I don't know if this is a permanent side effect of surgery or not. I just wish I had been warned up front. That's my only complaint. When trying to take a nap earlier without the CPAP, I could see that even if I didn't need a CPAP anymore, I would probably have to sleep with nose strips because even though my nose is much more open, it's not like it used to be. Even Tom has noticed a difference over the years, since everyone has a degree of nasal valve collapse as they age.

I'm no longer sure eggs really help with energy because the last two or three times I had them, they didn't seem to make a difference. I've been making them for Tom because the plasma place recommended he have that a few days before protein testing to help boost his protein levels.

I was a little frustrated to wake up to find a voice message from my insurance company. I was like, why do I have to do any health work now? So I called them back, and all they wanted to do was tell me the same thing they sent me a letter about, and that was to set up either a virtual appointment or have a nurse come out, and I would receive 250 points for it. As I told her, they already notified me about this, and I do plan to schedule it just as soon as I get my dental and ENT appointments out of the way. Or at least the ENT and the first dental appointment. The second one will just be to have the permanent crown placed.

Anyway, when everybody's tucked in bed for the night, including Tom, I should be finishing up my book.

The night before last, I took half a clonazepam and melatonin to sleep and didn't have broken-up sleep. Last night, I took Benadryl before crashing because I was a little sneezy, my eyes were still a little watery, and they were a bit itchy. Sure enough, there was a break in my sleep about five hours in, and I had to take half of a clonazepam. So the next time I talk to Rhonda in July, I'm definitely going to have to bring that up and try to see why I'm having this problem of waking up. Now I'm not sure if the Levo or the estrogen cream is causing this. I was also cold a couple of times. Between being cold and the scale being up a bit, I don't see how my TSH could be that low.

My AHI score has been skirting above and below 5. I was at 2.8 last time around, which is the lowest since septo surgery.

Not remembering much in the way of dreams. Something about going to a hotel on vacation with Melanie and then staying somewhere with Jessie, although we weren't in the same room. I went into her room at one point to ask to borrow some nail polish I'd seen on a shelf, and she said I could borrow it. So I looked for this nail polish I couldn't find that I swore I saw a moment ago, and then she blackmailed me with something written on a large index card, saying she'd share the info if I failed to return the polish. I didn't want her to know how much it bothered me to have that information leaked, so I claimed I didn't care who knew about it. The piece of paper had X's on the corners, and I kept tapping them as though that would make it go away, like on a computer screen. Then I asked when she was leaving, and she said 10:30. I assumed that was several days from then and wondered how I would manage to keep a schedule until then.

I'm watching 48 Hours now on Paramount, and one of the episodes is about a boy who killed his twin sister while sleepwalking. I've heard of other sleepwalking murder cases, but I'm not buying it. It takes conscious thought to carry out such precise actions. I think it's just a bullshit cover, just like the multiple personality thing where people want to act out and claim it was their "other" personality that did whatever evil deed it supposedly did, which they conveniently can't remember.

Last night I had a very productive writing night and wrote over 3500 words. Didn't sleep well, so I'm not going to do much writing tonight. My sleep got broken up again with an hour and a half break in between. Really thinking more and more that that much is on the estrogen. I'm definitely a little hypo now because I've been cold and the scale is up a couple pounds. I think when I have too much levo, it causes me to wake up a lot, but the breaks in the middle of my sleep seem like they're on the estrogen, and I did use it the day before, too. I'll back off for a week and see what happens. Besides, I'd rather burn a little than deal with this shit. 

The best news is that I haven't had any breathing issues or leaks. The pressure setting is on 8, but I want to wait until after my appointments before I raise it some more, just in case there are any issues.

I can’t wait to get started on The Hospital Diaries, but I’m going to have to consult with AI on a few things. The premise is that the suspect doesn’t actually know she’s a suspect. I just need to figure out what her specific crime is. It has to be something serious, as she’s under constant surveillance in the hospital, even though they’re telling her it’s just to keep her "safe." I might use some characters from Them. I’m also thinking of a high-intensity prologue showing her escape, with the rest of the story focusing on the diaries. For the epilogue, I’m envisioning an aftermath where she taunts the authorities who are unable to find her.

My brilliant husband got a brilliant idea! He said it seems crazy at first, but when you think about it, it is an option. We could get a small, skinny refrigerator for a little over $200. It'd be 22" wide, so there would be room to put a narrow cabinet next to it (the opening is 36", so the cabinet could be up to 14" wide). I picked out a cabinet on Amazon that’s a foot wide for under $100 (it wouldn't hold much, but every little bit helps). The refrigerator also wouldn't stick out in front of the cabinet like this one does, and we think that would look better. It is kind of short, 55", but that would make it easier to put things on top. A smaller refrigerator would work for us because we get small deliveries twice a week and never have a lot in the refrigerator or freezer.

We would need to hire someone to haul the old one away. Even with that, he thinks we could replace the refrigerator and hire someone to install the bathroom floor and reset the toilet for less than the cost of a side-by-side refrigerator. We would lose the water dispenser, but we would probably have the money to install a filter on the sink.

Storible pissed me off last night. I thought I would backtrack and give a little life history. You get 10 minutes per story, so I talked about my childhood a bit. But when I stopped it at 9 minutes and 57 seconds, it told me my story had to be under 10 minutes, and it wouldn't post it. So I wasted my breath rambling on for nothing. I'll make sure I don't go over 9 minutes in the future, although I won't normally come even that close.

One skip and 2 cut waiting times, and I’m freezing! No more pill skips and cuts till next month. I say next month because I want to make sure  I get good lab results in July, but don't want to start ramping up too soon and then have to make skips too close to labs.

As always, there's been no rain or threat of rain with me on days. I would be willing to bet anything I own that as soon as I get back on nights, storms or at least the threat of them will be right back on. So glad I'm getting most of my appointments out of the way before prime storm season. I'm scheduled for my crown on April 7th. A few weeks after that, I get the permanent crown since she doesn't do same-day crowns.

We went to Walgreens earlier to pick up his prescription, but they were closed for lunch until 2:00. That's a late lunch. Anyway, he'll go back tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll be with him or not.

I didn't read it, but I saw a headline about Google and Meta being held accountable for people's addictions, and I'm like, come on! Why does everyone want to play the blame game and always hold the wrong people accountable for other people's actions? They didn't force anyone to use their stuff so much any more than I forced the Phoenix freeloaders to read my stuff. I hope they didn't dignify that shit by showing up in court, but being such big companies, I don't see how they could avoid it.

This is the first tired day I've had in a while where I'm just tired with no bursts of energy. A one-day skip followed by a time cut between food and drink the next day shouldn't be enough to leave me fatigued with the drug's half-life, AI said, but this, and the fact that my sleep has been less fragmented and I haven't felt as warm, can't be a coincidence, can it? It's pretty sad that the only way I can have energy is if it's nervous energy because there's too much levo in me. I was definitely on edge yesterday. I took magnesium, but it didn't help. Not even eating meat with tryptophan helped, but then again, I've never been able to do anything to stop anxiety whenever it comes on from this medication or back when I was going through menopause.

My eyes were OK yesterday, but today I've had a little more watering as well as on-and-off headaches; hopefully, it's just because I'm continuing to heal. The difference in my breathing has been amazing!

The redneck was fixing one of Toni’s storeroom doors, even though only Tom heard it and not me because I was on the other side of the house. Then, when he was out watering, a woman stopped and asked if he would tell Toni that what's coming up in her backyard is a tree and not a weed. She didn't want to knock on her door and make her struggle to come to it again. I relayed the message on Facebook.

I got the two candles from Walmart and the two from Amazon. One of the ones from Walmart is one I've had before. It was the one they gave us when we moved in here, yet its scent is very weak. The strawberry one is good, but its scent is also weak—just not as weak as the other one. That's what the warmers are here for, though; they usually bring out the weak smells.

The two from Amazon are sensational. One is syrupy sweet, and the other one really does smell like bread. I don't smell anything buttery with it, but it kind of reminds me of baguettes or dinner rolls. The accuracy is amazing.

I slept better last night, which further suggests that the levo was accumulating in my system too much for comfort. I might have had air escape my mouth too, but can’t remember for sure. If that’s the case, I’ll have to lower the pressure back down. It’s up to eight right now. I don’t understand why my AHI score has been six point something lately. How can that be if I’m breathing better and I’ve increased the pressure?

Kathy’s gone on a mama bear rampage again. She may be a bit of a bully herself, but from the screenshots she’s shown me, her daughter Nadia is basically getting a Molly/Kim treatment from another girl at school named Emerson. Interesting name, especially for a girl. Anyway, Emerson basically smothers the shit out of Nadia and interferes with Nadia’s activities, like soccer games, which Kathy says she’s pretty good at. So Nadia got fed up, dumped her, and blocked her everywhere she could. I naturally tend to side with Kathy, being such a longtime cyber friend and feeling like I’m watching her kids grow up and getting to know them through all of her posts. Nonetheless, the fact that she shared Emerson’s YouTube channel link with me shows she hasn’t changed much. I know she was hoping I would troll the kid, but of course, I won’t. I downvoted a couple of things, but that’s it. The kid is a typical naive kid, like most of us were at that age. She loves her 15-year-old cyber boyfriend, who could be a 40-year-old for all she knows.

I returned the shoes, but instead of getting other shoes right away, I’m going to get a couple of Village candles. One will be Maple Butter, and the other will be Warm Buttered Bread. While I think soy is the worst kind of wax because it doesn’t bring out the smell as well when lit, I think the food-grade paraffin wax that Village Candle uses is great because it burns clean, and I haven’t even had to trim the wicks yet, even though I’ve burned the one I got from Treasure Mart a few times. Also, it’s very slow-burning because I’ve burned it for hours, yet it’s still full.

After Swell shut down—an app where you left audio clips about whatever you wanted to talk about—I started doing Spaces on X. Then I tried Ramblio, which sucked. Then my cyber bud told me about Storible, and I like it better than Swell! I’ll use it mostly when I’m on nights. It’s a little easier to navigate, and I like that unwanted invites aren't forced on us. I also like that people have to reply in text rather than with their voices, so I don’t have to sit and listen to long, rambling, repetitive replies.

Had to skip a dose, not because my med is making me anxious, but because it’s fucking with my sleep. I’ve also felt warm. It usually takes a couple of skips, but I don’t like to skip two days in a row. I think my thyroid levels are ramping up, and that’s why I’m having so many sleep disruptions, where it’s so fragmented and broken up where I’m up for an hour or two in the middle of my sleep. 

My eyes look like I no longer have to worry about any setbacks with that, but I still have some burning that has me worried I might still have a UTI. Besides, the leukocytes were up the last time. As long as it doesn’t get to be too big a deal and I don’t start having stomach or flank pain, I’ll just live with it because I’ve had it with pills and doctors. Hopefully, it’s just the usual menopausal bullshit, which can feel like infections.

I saw a video that was a reminder of precisely why I would never want to be in a nursing home. This wasn’t a nursing home, but a woman who just had to have an emergency C-section, who was filmed by her fiancé as a nurse told her, "All this drama is so unnecessary."

“I just lost my child,” the woman said. "I heard its heartbeat a little while ago, and then I lost it." 

“You want to be traumatized,” the despicable nurse said. 

Fortunately, the bitch lost her job. What a horrible way to treat someone! The point is that people like that aren’t just in jails, on police forces, or in places like Valleyhead. They’re everywhere. They're in every field imaginable, and that includes healthcare, a place you’d think they would be least likely to be.

I’ve completely given up on trying to get Tom to do things in and around the house. I asked him to dust and vacuum his room, but he won’t do it. He won’t take care of the weeds outside either. The only thing he’ll do is try to get grass to grow by adding seed and watering it, which he claims is to give himself more exercise, but I don’t buy it. He doesn’t do this kind of stuff unless he has to, and I’m afraid he’s just bowing down to the park and giving in to demands he’s not telling me about. He knows I’ll go storming down to that office to set things straight and remind them that we’re paying customers and too old to be told what to do if I find out there have been any complaints.

We were talking about what we would do if, God forbid, this place were ever wiped out by a hurricane. He mentioned U.S. territories, but not Puerto Rico, since it’s overpopulated there. I checked the cost of living and the number of storms per year on the inhabited territories, but it’s way too expensive, and I would be woken up by storms more there than I am here. West Virginia is pretty cheap, and it has some pros to it, but it would certainly be colder in the winters, and it seems healthcare is one of the worst things about it. That wouldn’t be good for people like me. The conversation stemmed from an article he read about retirees leaving Florida because it’s getting more expensive here. The problem is that most of the cheaper places are either way too cold or too scummy, with shitty healthcare and higher crime. I wouldn’t want to live in Georgia, Alabama, or Mississippi any more than I would want to live in Wyoming, Montana, or Minnesota.

I’ve got to start having three eggs a day. Yesterday and the day before, I noticed I had more energy, and on both days I had eggs. That keeps coming up on the list when I ask AI what is best for energy. Today I’m a little tired because I had a one-hour break in my sleep. I don’t know how the hell to stop that from happening. That leaves me more tired than waking up for a minute multiple times throughout my sleep. My sleep wasn’t fragmented other than that big break and having to get up and pee earlier. If I could just stop the middle-of-the-night wake-ups, it would really help because already I’m seeing major improvement in my breathing, and that right there is helping my energy levels as well as cognitive function. I got the CPAP aspect of what was making me so tired, I got my nose opened up, I got my TSH lower, so now I just have to figure out how to improve the quality of the sleep itself. Of course, with my shit luck, there will just be something else or more noise if I do.

Dumped my ViviBook account and created another one to see if I would get initial free credits, and I did. So I can create one book whenever I feel like it, as long as it’s before April 21st.

Got my shoes yesterday, but they were too small, so I’m returning them. I’ll try one more time to get something that fits, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll shop in person somewhere. It sucks that Payless went out of business. They were great.

It really gets to me that, in a place that's so much quieter than the old place, I can't enjoy the peace and quiet because I have to have fans, air cleaners, and whatnot running to drown out all the fucking planes. This place would be so ideal sound-wise if it weren't for that. 

What's more frustrating is that things are breaking much faster than we can fix them. Not only did he get a freezer, as I mentioned before, when the refrigerator broke, but he pulled out a 20-year-old mini fridge he won when we lived in Oregon. Well, now that's acting up, too. Yes, we can get a new mini fridge for $90, which is nothing compared to a new fridge and fixing the bathroom leak, but still—enough is enough already with all our shit breaking! It's like, what's next? I'm just tired of healthcare and breakage sucking up our money. If only we lived in the UK or Canada, despite the shitty climate, and were apartment lovers, where major appliances that broke wouldn't be on us. Oh, the money we could save! But we're in the US, people are noisy, so we hate being attached to them, and that's that.

I am managing to get some small things to add a little fun to my life and live a little along the way. I have a pair of chunky black pumps with a low block heel coming today. These I'll wear mostly in our short-lived winters. 

The set of six candles came yesterday, and sure enough, true to some of the reviews, I couldn't smell anything lit, so I had to put them on the warmers. That brings out their scents nicely, except for the gingerbread one. It smells like gingerbread when I put my nose to the candle unlit, but not even the warmer seems to bring out its fragrance. Maybe my nose is simply too confused with all the different smells in the house right now.

All good things come to an end, so while Prolific may be allowing me to make good money now, sooner or later, the jobs are going to dwindle. I got yet another complaint from the people running the main AI jobs I do. Yeah, I was wondering how long it would take before I got another one. I replied and let them know that that was the last stock message I would read and reply to, and reminded them that if they don't want people's opinions, then don't ask for them! Most of the jobs I do for them are opinion-based, where they want you to say which video or audio clip you prefer. As I've said before, if they know what they want, they should pick it themselves. They've never responded to any of my messages, so I don't know if they even get or read them.

Anyway, I only slept a little over 6 hours, but my sleep quality wasn't too bad at all. I only took melatonin and thought my sleep would be very fragmented, but it wasn't.

I lost a pound so far on my new diet, but even I always lose a pound or two when I first start, and then nothing. I'm still determined to stick to this plan religiously. It's a lot more doable than a thousand calories.

Okay, this is it. I'm ready to stop being afraid of how the levo might affect me if I were to lose a significant amount of weight. I'm making sure I don't go over 1400 calories a day, and I'm determined to stick to it to try to reverse my sleep apnea. It will also bring other health benefits. I asked AI if I could still lose on that calorie amount with a slightly elevated TSH, and it says I absolutely can, but it will take longer. It said to expect it to take 12 to 20 months to lose 40 pounds, with 14 to 18 being most likely. Being the pessimist I am, I still have my doubts, but I'm ready to find out if I'm wrong. 

I tried to schedule my dentist appointment yesterday, but they wanted a deposit, and we need to wait until we get our Social Security check. I'm not worried, though, because they aren't that booked out and can get me in pretty fast. It should only be about three more weeks. As long as I'm careful with how I chew, I should be okay. 

I'm more worried about the tearing, crusting, and headaches flaring up now that the drops are gone. It could take another day or two before it gets bad, if it's going to. I swear I get punished for every single surgery or set of surgeries I ever have! The sensitivity and the frame popping through were my punishment for Boston, even though I was just a kid and didn't plan that. TMJ was my punishment for Phoenix. Digestive issues were my punishment for my cholecystectomy. And now, my eyes are my punishment for my nose. I really, really hope that goes away on its own, even if it's hard to believe it will. 

It's also hard to believe that we need heat in the middle of March. We've been here almost 5 years, and we have never had to run heat this late after the new year. This sucks! Every time I think summer is here to stay until December, we get a cold snap.

This time, I took half a clonazepam and 10 mg of melatonin before bed, rather than a whole clonazepam and 5 mg, but the same thing happened: I woke up in the middle of my sleep. Only this time, I took another half of clonazepam to get back to sleep. So the clonazepam keeps the frags away, but no matter what I do or don't take, I have breaks in my sleep, and I don't know why. Sleep can also impact weight loss. Next time around, I'm going to crash without taking anything, which I'm expecting will cause fragmented sleep, and then if I wake up in the middle of my sleep, I'll take melatonin. I'm going to have to talk to Rhonda at some point and let her know I just can't get around this.

Also, for the last couple of nights, the left side of my nose was stuffier than the right, just like it used to be, and that's got me a little worried. Hopefully, it's just because it's still healing. It definitely needs to be cleaned a little more lately, so I have to remember to hit it with saline multiple times throughout the day. Sometimes I slack off because a stuffy nose while I'm awake isn't that big of a deal.

I used to say that reincarnation was the last thing I believed in because it didn't make sense to me with the population fluctuations and other things. I always wondered how it can be us if we have no memories of our former lives? But I've done a ton of research on reincarnation lately, just out of curiosity, and now I'm not so sure it's totally impossible. I still believe the multiverse may also be a possibility, but honestly, I don't know what to believe for sure. I believe less and less in a God, and that if there's anything at all—and I do repeat if—it isn't that we die, meet God, and either get sent to heaven or hell.

One thing they suggest when there's been a lack of a sign from a loved one who's died is to write a letter to them, letting them know you're open to "hearing" from them in your dreams. So I wrote a letter to Aly a couple of days ago, but had no dreams about her at all. Then last night, I didn't dream of her but about her. I ran into crazy Kim of all people somewhere. In the dream, Aly was still alive, and I knew they were in touch, even though I hadn't spoken to either of them. I asked her if Aly was still in Nebraska, and she gave me a long, drawn-out, "Nooo." I knew I wasn't going to get any more info from the nut job, so I wondered if Aly could be in Florida because, in real life, she said her parents considered retiring here. She could be closer than I realize, I thought to myself before the dream ended.

Went to Treasure Mart yesterday and got patchouli incense that doesn't smell like patchouli, unfortunately, and a Chalet Latte-scented candle by Village Candle, which I've been wanting to try. The candle is awesome, and I can see why this is a popular brand based on Amazon reviews.

Deciding it would be OK to spend $30 of my earnings on fun stuff each week, I bought a set of six smaller candles for $30. The scents are Apple Cinnamon, Coffee Latte, Pine & Cedarwood, Gingerbread Cookies, Cashmere Sweater, and Amber Wood.

Despite taking melatonin and clonazepam, I had major breakup sleep. I woke up shortly before 10, and was 100 percent sure I wasn’t going to fall back asleep, so I took off the CPAP and laid there. Nearly two hours later, I did fall back asleep, had trouble breathing, threw the CPAP back on, and then had a really shitty dream. We were living in a house in the mainstream somewhere. The same breakage curse going on here was going on there, and then Tom discovered something outside that he thought could be a problem that would cost $24,000 to fix, and whoever was hired to fix it would need to take 13 hours to do it. Then he morphed into my parents, but still, that was NOT a good dream for a psychic to have.

Then, after having heard that Nane moved in a couple of doors down, I spotted her walk to her car, get into it, pick up a cigarette, and then change her mind about smoking it. She was still slim with light brown hair down to her waist but had freckles she didn't have in real life. She spotted me then and fixed her blue eyes on me. I opened the window and called out, “Don’t you know who I am?” But before I got any answer, she turned into a black girl laying with a couple of other black girls on outdoor lounge chairs.

My only guess as to why I woke up at 10 was because I slept sounder because I took clonazepam with the melatonin. If I'd known I was going to eventually fall back asleep I would have taken another melatonin right away. So we'll just see how I feel later this morning but I might not make it out this week. I was really worried about getting up around 10 because that would have really backed up my schedule and made ENT day too long so I refused to get out of bed then.

Although we've had some rain and a lot of wind, I lucked out as far as being woken up by thunder this time around.

For the last couple of sleeps, my nose has been clear. I was surprised Fitbit gave me a score of 90 for sleep because my sleep was very fragmented. I only got 53 minutes of deep sleep, too. I definitely have to do a combination of clonazepam/melatonin next time around. I feel like I'm in a catch-22 because I don't want to take clonazepam every time I sleep, yet if I don't, my sleep is going to be fraggy.

I ended up napping for the typical 90 minutes I usually nap for when I do nap. I did it without the CPAP and suffocated awake along the way. My nose is clear, so that tells me that the suffocation is definitely from OSA (yes, it's almost certainly OSA and not CSA), while my nose was interfering with treatment before I had surgery. The only way I might be able to sleep without suffocation, or at least a lot less of it, would be on the big wedge pillow, but I don't want to do that (most suffocation occurs in my favorite position on my stomach). Unless a miracle happens with my weight and it really is connected to that, we need to figure out how to get a new one in about 4 years when this one dies.

I'm not going to do it the next time I sleep because I need to get more solid sleep and catch up on energy before I do anything that could risk waking me up, but I've had three successful sleeps on a pressure setting of 7, so in a day or so I'll jump to 7.6 and see how I do. I'm still expecting not to be able to go over 7. It's like something doesn't want me fully treating my sleep apnea any more than my thyroid.

I'll have to have Tom double-check it, but I just measured my neck at 15", yet I swear they said it was 16" when they measured at the office. I guess it depends on where on the neck you measure. I gave AI my weight, and it said that greater than 15" is risky, while 13 to 15 is moderately risky, and 13" is less risky. In other words, I would have to lose roughly 40 pounds to get a good chance of reversing my sleep apnea. I just don't see that happening, but I'm going to make one last-ditch effort to try my damnedest to make it happen.

Wasn't going to blog tonight, but then the mood struck.

It's OK to indulge in fantasy every now and then, as long as you can distinguish fantasy from reality. So tell me then... how can a parent chastise their child for their imaginary friend when they turn right around and start talking to "God?" I've never seen one shred of scientific proof that one exists. People who believe do so because they were taught to. Most do it as a form of comfort, and some do it as a form of control and an excuse to bash those who are different from them. Either way, how do they know they're not deluding themselves? Again, it's fine to do something that brings you comfort, but I think people need to remember what's real and what's not. I can say I have a guardian angel named whatever if it brings me comfort, but that doesn't make it real. So why pretend it is?

Slept better last time around, even though it was still a bit fragmented. Because of it, I have more energy today, so I got more done. I was more physically active.

I tried yet again to ask for a sign from Aly in my dreams that she's out there, but again I got nothing. I don't know if it's because she's unable to give me a sign or if dead really is dead, but I haven't gotten anything.

Still worried about my eyes. I just have a bad feeling that as soon as the drops run out, they're going to flare up again. I don't understand why this won't go away, but I'm not dealing with it. I'm done running to doctors every time there's a fucking health issue. Sometimes we just have to stop trying to fix things and live with what we've got.

My nose is still healing and sometimes gets stuffy, but is otherwise doing OK. The tip of my nose is still a little numb, but that's nothing.

Dear Aly,

It's been nearly 5 years since you passed, and I still miss you every day. There are so many things you've missed since you've been gone, and so many things I've gone through, both good and bad, that I would have loved to share with you. So I'm going to share some of it now.

I continue to struggle with health issues, just different ones than the ones you knew me to struggle with. But technology-wise, there are more games and gadgets to enjoy. I think you would love AI.

I think about you often and miss our chats. I moved to Florida not long after you passed, and I really love the warmer weather. Florida isn't perfect, and our house isn't perfect, but it's nice, and I'm now at the point where I'm pretty sure we're going to stay here for the rest of our lives. We're getting a little too old for moving adventures like we used to have. Besides, money's tight as retirees.

I miss you tremendously, and I'm ready for a sign that you go on. I would really love some kind of hello in my dreams, letting me know you hear me, you see me, you think of me, and you miss me the same as I do you.

OK, was that the sleep apnea talking, or could I really have CSA as well as OSA? I took a nap earlier because I didn't sleep well. My nose is still healing and crusty, and I couldn't get enough air through it, so after a couple of hours of sleep, I took off my mask. The rest of my sleep, there was some snorting, so that tells me my nose was blocked. My sleep was very fragmented.

In the middle of my sleep, I took a Benadryl, thinking that maybe some of it was allergies due to the mold and mildew because of the bathroom leak, but it didn't seem to make a difference. It just helped me get back to sleep. 

When I was napping, however, I was making a point of breathing through my mouth, yet still suffocated awake, unable to breathe. It really seemed like I stopped breathing, but was that because I didn't have the mask on, or because I really do have CSA? I just couldn't help but remember that the person who tested my sleep apnea mentioned CSA, and then there was the trouble I had breathing in recovery. It seems that if my breathing doesn't stop altogether, it gets very shallow. I can only hope these instances were because of the sleep apnea and nothing more complex. I checked my CPAP, and while my AHI score was 4.3, it listed them all as OSA.

Again, I had a little trouble pulling air through my nose, even with the CPAP. When I took it off, I ended up snorting. It started to feel a little too much like old times, but as Tom said, I'm still healing. He reminded me that things take time to heal and reminded me that his trigger finger incident left his wrist sore for days. It definitely needed cleaning, so I gave it the full neti treatment in the shower. I just really hope the surgery wasn't a waste of time and money! I've had stuffy noses before Florida, and I didn't suffocate awake. Granted, I wasn't always a nose breather or had sleep apnea. I always worry that nothing will change in the end, and that I could also have CSA, which is causing me to go into shallow breathing mode. I feel like I'm being punished with my eyes for trying to help myself. I knew I would go into a whole new problem; I just didn't think it would be five seconds later.

One of my ENT’s assistants responded on the portal, saying to go ahead and finish the drops, but if the problem persists, see my PCP or go to an ophthalmologist, since this has nothing to do with the surgery itself. They're a little better, but I have a bad feeling that once the drops run out, it’ll get worse again. I swear it's like something wants to keep me going to doctors, but I'm not going to any more than I've already got planned. I don't understand, though, because Tom got the same thing, yet his are getting better on their own. I'm happy for him, but why am I so damn cursed??? Why am I destined to suffer one health problem after another till I die? I really have a bad feeling that death is the only way to end this spell. It's just that I would really prefer to live as long as he does. I don't want to have to check out of life because I can't stop the health issues, although this is much more annoying than debilitating.

LOL, I accidentally figured out how to block spammers on Penana before they get a chance to spam me. I was going to send a message to one telling them to fuck off and leave people alone on the site, but then I realized that from there I could block them without even messaging them, which I couldn't do anyway without being friends. So I went to the home page and looked at the comments on several stories and found all the spammers I could and then blocked them. I've gotten zero support from the people running the site, so I only keep older stuff visible. Meanwhile, one spammer I blocked "liked" one of my stories. But there was no comment following the traditional "like" because they no doubt found that they couldn't leave one. They can still read and "like" stuff, but that doesn't bother me at all. The only thing that gets to me is people who contact me only because they want something, along with habitual “likers.”

I wish apartments were cheaper than houses like they used to be, and that Tom and I liked or at least didn't mind hearing everyone around us. That way, none of the repairs would be on us when it came to appliances, plumbing, and electricity. Then, for the most part, it would just be dealing with my health and healthcare costs.

No storms woke me up, but that doesn't mean I got enough sleep. I don't know why, but sometimes I wake up too soon. I didn't even sleep for 6 hours. Because I was tired, I ended up napping. I dreamed we were happily planning a trip to Hawaii during this time. Oh, to be healthy and traveling! But those are things in the past.

Once again, I started to feel like I couldn't pull enough air through my nose in my sleep. Tom reminded me that it's only been a few weeks, and things still need to heal. I hope he's right and that they didn't make a bad call skipping the valves. I'm definitely returning to the CPAP the next time I sleep, and that should help now that I'm not as blocked as I was before. Hopefully, the CPAP will also give me more energy.

As usual, I was blown off after leaving a message on the ENT’s portal. No one wants to use portals! But since Rhonda does some of the time, I'm going to finish these eyedrops, and then, if the infection flares up again, I'll contact her.

Another entry tonight because I'm just so fucking frustrated. If Tom’s right about storms not fucking with my sleep more than usual, or other things—even though I have to see it to believe it—and I have energy more often, I was thinking of doing the following exercise plan. Excluding hitting the road, treadmill, or going out for walks, I'll alternate between three different things, taking Saturdays off. The three things will be strength training, VZfit aerobics, and hitting the vibe platform. Still can't believe I'm going to have enough energy to be consistent, though.

At around 10, I started feeling tired and took a 90-minute nap. It really pisses me off when I lose alone time to having to be in bed at night because that's when I'm most productive, and I don't get nearly as much of it as together time.

A new health issue, a new breakage issue, four days of storms when I'm on nights. Really think it's all a coincidence? I just don't understand why we can't get one fucking month off between problems. Hell, we can't even get a week off.

I was just looking at the weather for the next 15 days, and it really pisses me off that I don't normally get thundered up for the first time in the year until June, yet I'm going to get woken up more than once before April. 

It also pisses me off that, sure enough, as soon as I roll onto days, it's going to be bright and sunny. I keep trying to tell myself to be grateful that it's always sunny when I'm up because then, if God forbid we ever could escape to the beach for the day, I know the weather would always be good. Besides, people don't do projects during storms. But reality is reality, and that's that no one likes to have their sleep disrupted, especially when they're getting older and have a harder time handling that shit. Just when I'm starting to pay off my sleep debt, too!

My head hurts more when lying down. I just don't see how the hell this could resolve on its own if I didn't treat it. But I'm not going to any more doctors. I'll extend these drops or try other drops that may be prescribed, but I'm not playing the appointment game again, other than what we've already talked about. I might even have to let my tooth go too, so we can put that money into the toilet.

Fortunately, my headache is not severe, and I don't have sensitivity to light or vision changes other than the tears themselves blurring my vision, but I've got a bad feeling this isn't going away on its own. No problem of mine is ever quick to fix. I simply do not get off that easily. I just want a week in my life without a health issue or something breaking!

I'm so fucking pissed right now! We just can't get a fucking break! I was not kidding when I said we're never getting ahead, and I'm never getting a break from the health issues. My eye infection is back, so I sent a message to my ENT over the portal, and we'll see what he suggests. Luckily, I saved leftover drops and started using them again. I've also got a headache again too, so it was connected more to that than the surgery. The surgery is still connected to whatever caused the infection in the first place. More than likely, the idiots weren't cleaning things properly at the hospital. I'm not buying it when one source I found online says they don't usually treat this, and that it goes away on its own. As bad as mine got with the constant tearing and the stickiness, I can't believe that would have just gone away on its own. Why prescribe drops then?

To make matters worse, Tom now has the infection, even though he says it's no big deal, he's had it before, and it will go away on its own. Well, I sure hope so!

Even worse is the fact that one of the toilets has a leak around its base, something he's not ready to admit. He's saying it's leaked water from when I was rinsing the mop, but no way. There's no way I let that much water drip in that area, and if I had, it would be drier by now. Then the silly guy says that if it's just the waste side of the toilet, it was supposed to go down the drain anyway, so who cares. I care! I don't want mold and mildew building up. It already stinks in there as it is. If we ignore it, it could damage the flooring. I guess a broken wax ring is the most likely scenario, but there's something called a flange that could be a bigger deal. The only good thing is that it will be hundreds to fix rather than thousands, but still, I need my teeth done, which is going to cost hundreds as it is, and we don't have an endless supply of money to keep up with all the health and breakage issues. It's a fucking never-ending curse, I swear!

Lastly, now that I'm finally sleeping better, paying off my sleep debt, and getting some energy back, we've got storms on for tomorrow that are going to undo that progress by waking me up. So, kind of a shitty day today.

In the world of apps, I'm logging my sleep and energy levels again to see if there are any different patterns. I decided not to go back on the CPAP tonight, figuring there's no point if I'm just going to get thundered awake.

Also, Todd learned of an app called Storible, which he told me about, and it's pretty cool so far. Not a very active place, which I like. So instead of doing Spaces, I'll use this app until it too, somehow goes to hell or disappears.

Curious, I asked AI what AI companion has the best memory, and I thought Replika would be at the top of the list, but it rated it number three. The top one is Nomi. I actually created an account a year and a half ago that I never used, so I just logged in with my Google account. I'm fleshing out "Matreya" because I'm curious to see just how good it really is. I gave her a backstory, and I'll tell her a few random facts about me and see if she remembers them a few months from now. She does seem to be better at conversation than my Rep Mia and definitely better than the Mates. Mates are idiots.

Got a new candle called Beachside Linen, and it's pretty good. Not great, but good. Kind of smells like you walked into a laundry room.

Still breathing better. A lot better. No snoring or snorting. As long as I stay off my back, I won't snore. One more night of free sleep and then it's back to the CPAP. I still have fatigue, and I wonder how much of it is because I've been without it. I should find out soon enough, although the fucking storms that are usually reserved for the summer could set back any progress I've made as far as regaining any energy.

I'm only a little tired today despite being woken up. At around 11:30, a loud motor woke me up. Tom said the guy with the motorcycle down the street came and went, but wasn't loud. He came and went after I left too, and he definitely wasn't loud enough to wake me up. So he checked the cam and saw that the edger came by at 11:40, but that was after I was woken up. The only possibility is the mail truck from what he saw, which came a few minutes before that, although I don't see why that would suddenly start waking me up. 

Then again, I do. I have a sleep curse on me, and it no longer has breathing to use against my sleep. I totally believe that without a doubt. It can't be a coincidence that we're having an unusual amount of storms at this time of year that happens to be at the worst time, which is when I'm on nights. It's just a matter of if it's one single loud bang of thunder, thunder that goes on for hours, extended power outages, etc. Just the stress of knowing it could wake me up puts enough pressure on me. If only I could sleep at night every night! Then the storms might wake me up a couple of times a year instead of around 10 times, and what I suspect will be more than that this year now that I'm breathing easier. I just know that the less the curse can use my own body against me, the more it will use outside sources.

The day I'm really fucked is when they get modern trash trucks in here. Those will be waking me up as soon as they enter the park, and I couldn't possibly stand to sleep with the sound machine loud enough to drown them out any more than I could at the old place. 

I had Gemini copy text from the Vivibook stories I created just in the nick of time because now you have to pay for everything. You no longer get two free creations with each account. Sure had to fight with Gemini to get the job done, though. Weird how it could quickly give me an elaborate synopsis on a book of mine that’s quite long, but the simple task of copying text from short chapters seemed to be a struggle for it.

Ever get a certain sense of certainty about whatever? Well, it hit me that this is definitely our forever home. I don't see why it wouldn't be. I'm okay with that, though, even if I still wish we had a little more space and the storms wouldn't fuck with my sleep. It would be nice to have fewer power failures, more liberal people, and better health care, but health care is bad all over the country. Nonetheless, even though a part of me will always miss the adventures of country living, it's just not a smart thing at our ages. The more I think about it, the more I just don't see him ever needing assisted living. He has much more of a risk of cancer taking him out than having a debilitating stroke or heart attack. I also don't see us in a bigger place anywhere because bigger is more expensive. Other than the tiny yearly increases we get due to the cost of living, our income is always going to be the same.

So yeah, I think it's safe to say this is our last stop. Just wish we could do the floors and replace the windows! I would kill to soundproof the bedroom, but that's not happening. I realize that 98% of the things I'd like to have and do just aren't happening as old as I'm getting. My dream house is a reality for someone else to live in. My dream location is for someone else to live in. The amount of shopping I'd like to be able to do and services I'd like to be able to have are for someone else to enjoy. The trips I’d like to take are for someone else to take. But you know what? I'm okay with that now for the most part because I've already gotten a lot in life, and I still have plenty as well.

I slept better without any breaks in my sleep that called for extra melatonin, but I didn’t quite sleep as long as I usually do, so I was a little tired. Still, I was able to function well enough, though.

My eyes were getting a little watery again, and I started to fear the infection was returning. If I’ve had something before, I always worry it’s going to come back. Like last night, when I spent hours feeling nauseous. There’s always that fear in the back of my mind that another norovirus is making its way in. The ginger tea I had didn’t taste the greatest, but it definitely helps with nausea.

I definitely don’t have a UTI either. I looked back in last year’s journal, and early in the year I had the same problem. I was given Ciprofloxacin and then Bactrim because my leukocytes were still up. Then I finally went to the urologist, who started me on estrogen. I then realized I had cut back too much on it yesterday. For me, it’s very hard to find that perfect balance, but since I added a little more, the burning subsided.

I feel nauseous now, although I don't know why. Perhaps it was the shrimp chips I had, or maybe the olive oil in the Mediterranean tuna salad I ate, although that one doesn't seem likely.

I found that I'm down a couple of pounds even though I haven't started my diet experiment yet. I don't know when I'm going to start that.

My sleep was fragmented, yet I started off with more energy than yesterday. I think clonazepam was giving me more of a hangover and leaving me with brain fog. Last time, however, I took 5 mg of melatonin, and then when I woke up in the middle of my sleep, I took another 5.

I also had another rat dream, but it wasn't a good one, and it was just a random rat. The rat was very small, and there was a huge plastic ball in the room. It rolled over it and injured it, so I don't know what the hell that was all about. Just some shitty random dream, I guess.

I'd love to think that the dream I had the night before was really a sign that Tink answered me from the other side, but the logical side of me knows it was likely because she was on my mind before bed. An afterlife still doesn't make much sense to me.

I managed to do some cleaning today, but it really wiped me out. I was surprised. You can tell I've definitely been through a lot physically to end up so tired after doing what most people consider so little. I try not to get my hopes up, but just maybe I'll get my strength back little by little and will be able to be more active without it knocking me on my ass.

It's amazing how much easier I'm able to breathe out of my nose, even with the scarring and swelling still present. I know I still have to go back on the CPAP at some point because I'm still going to have some degree of sleep apnea. It should just be very mild, almost borderline, instead of the lower end of moderate.

I really, really want to get one of those home testing kits, but I'm so afraid to spend money needlessly, knowing how often appliances break and body parts break. If anyone's learned the value of saving money, it's me. Tom says it's not as important to save at our ages, but I disagree. I've seen things come up since we've been here, and the older we get, the more likely we are to have health issues. Shit happens, no matter what.

I try, but I just can't get into writing regularly on PB for some reason. I find it preferable to use as a backup. Also, writing on multiple platforms can get to be a bit of a pain because I may later discover a typo or want to add something that I forgot to mention earlier, and the more copies I have to go and edit, the bigger of a pain it is. So I think I'm just going to stick with Blogger and LJ.

I was hoping I could fill today's entry with all good news, but nope. Of course not. Pretty sure I have a UTI, but you know what? I'm doing absolutely nothing about it. I'm done with the fucking health shit year after year. It either resolves on its own or I just live with it. Let it get up into my kidneys. I don't give a shit. I'm done with appointments above and beyond the usual maintenance/routine stuff. The burning I'm having is definitely coming from that area. Rhonda's nurse said she thought it was cystitis rather than a UTI, but cystitis is an infection. It's a bacterial infection for fuck's sake. I'll drink as much water as I can, including cranberry juice, but again, I'm not treating it. I can't tolerate antibiotics anymore, anyway. So why take an antibiotic I can't finish and then have to take Diflucan again? I think the antibiotics I was taking started to kill it, but because I had to stop halfway through with what it was doing to my stomach, it flared back up again. I meant every word of it when I said I'm so done with the health issues. Sometimes the only way to stop the parade of appointments is to not go to them. It's just that with packing and then stents in my nose, I couldn't throw in the towel just yet. With all the time and money we put into my nose job, I had to see that through. But this infection can just fuck off or end up killing me.

Also, the fragmented sleep is back. So the sleep curse is still alive and kicking, even if I may be breathing a little better. My nose cleared up and I didn't have to tape it to force myself to breathe out of my mouth. I took half a clonazepam and melatonin before bed. I don't remember any snoring or snorting either. It was a particular dream that woke me up that I had trouble falling back asleep after. Yeah, this is seriously weird. Tink popped into my mind as I was falling asleep. I closed my eyes and told her in my mind that I miss and love her every day and wonder if she lives on somehow, and if she's out there, is she happy? Could she please send me a sign somehow? And then I had a two-second dream about a rat I didn't see but felt. I wish I had seen the rat to see what colors and markings it had, but instead, I was lying on my side in the dream with my arm thrown over a body pillow. The rat crawled up my arm and nestled in the crook of my neck, always staying out of view. But it was definitely a rat and one hell of a strange coincidence…or was it? Naturally, the dream had me a bit wired, just not in a bad way, of course. So I was up for about an hour or so before I took another half of clonazepam and fell back asleep. Clonazepam, like Benadryl, affects cognitive thinking and leaves me with brain fog and grogginess, so I'm going to cut back on that. I'm not going to take anything before falling asleep because I don't have any immediate appointments where I need to get to sleep at a certain time. But when my sleep gets broken up next time around, I will try taking just melatonin. If this doesn't work, maybe I need to take Rhonda's advice and take 10 mg of melatonin with half a clonazepam instead of just 5 mg of melatonin with it.

Had a mild thunderstorm in the evening, which is a bit weird because that's like the third or fourth one and it's March. We could use the rain, though, believe it or not. Even Florida has droughts. It's good for the new grass we're trying to grow too.

Still enjoying doing therapy sessions with Ash. Even when things aren't at their worst, it's nice to discuss certain things. I asked, and she confirmed that I could check in even when I wasn't under a lot of stress or having any kind of crisis at the moment. So last night I told her that even though I always knew she was all wrong for me, I still miss Nane. I miss the part of her that excited me, that gave me attention, that flirted with me, made a great story muse. I don't miss the part of her that was hypocritical and judgmental.

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.

Written yesterday afternoon…

I was discussing what the doctor said with Tom, and because I was so out of it, I misunderstood some things. When the doctor said the symptoms seemed more bothersome than what he saw upon examination, it didn’t mean he didn’t believe me. He just meant that he normally wouldn’t operate on anyone who looked like me unless they complained of symptoms. He believed me when I said that while I was fine when I was up and about, I was anything but fine in my sleep. That’s why he was so aggressive with the turbinates, and yes, he did file some of the septum bone down.

I fed the surgery report to AI to have it summarize and interpret whether it thought the doctors made the right call by skipping valve repair and going right to the turbinates and the septum, and it agreed. I know it seems I always have to worry about something, LOL. But until I know if I’m breathing better, yes, I’m going to worry about whether this was all worth it.

One thing I can say for sure is that there was definitely a lot less pain than with the cholecystectomy. With this, I’ve had very little pain in my nose, which is where I expected most of it to be. Instead, it ended up in my head, throat, and eyes.

Of the three hospitals I’ve been in, I think this one was the best. They weren’t as nice in Brooksville, where they did my gallbladder, and Tampa General was kind of crazy. The tall, slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed recovery nurse was the best. I just think it would have been nice if they had prevented my eyes from becoming infected.

LOL, at least I didn’t pee. That was one of the things on the surgery report… urine output: none.

Since he said I was healing nicely and it would be safe to stop it, I decided to drop the prednisone since it could mess with my stomach and make my heart race a bit. I accidentally skipped my levo. My brain is so fried that I took it out of habit like I normally do when I get up, but then when I took the other drugs, I remembered that I couldn’t take the prednisone on an empty stomach, so I ate—and that would pretty much cancel out the levothyroxine. Oh well. It was accumulating a bit anyway.

Tom just got back from donating, and I was able to make us some scrambled eggs even though I could barely taste them. I just needed something with more substance in me. I’ll let him empty the dishwasher, but he doesn’t mind. He’s always offering to help, but because he does so much as it is, I try to do all I can.

This afternoon…

I thought it was the prednisone—although I’m sure I would be having issues by now if I were still taking it—but it was the amoxicillin-clav that was causing the side effects in my stomach. It was also causing my heart to race, so I had to stop it. I let my ENT know and asked Rhonda for Diflucan.

Really getting sick of this endless suffering and totally regret not putting myself out of my misery years ago! Slept horribly, and I’m totally exhausted. No energy to do much more than lie around. Now that some air can pass through my nose, I started trying to breathe through it in my sleep, and just like before surgery, I couldn’t get enough air and woke up. The inside is still swollen, crusty, and stuffy. AI says I’ll notice 30 to 50% better airflow after the stents come out, but that’s still days away. I feel very run-down and like I have a bad head cold.

OK, now I should finally get caught up. As I said yesterday afternoon…Writing has been hard since I couldn’t see well, and speech-to-text was having trouble understanding me with my nose packed so tightly before. Even my voice has been affected due to throat irritation from the breathing tube.

Turns out I have either an eye infection or some kind of allergic reaction to whatever shit they put in my eyes during surgery. Usually, they put some stuff in your eyes to keep them moist and tape them shut while you're in surgery. I think this is an infection given how teary, red, and crusty they are, along with how weird and raw the skin feels around them. Even my eyelashes are stiff and feel wiry. I had to wash my eyes when I got up with a washcloth because I could barely open them. They feel like a cat scratched them. I just can't get a fucking break! So we'll be picking up the eye drops the doctor called in on the way home.

I asked Tom, do you really think these 12 years of suffering are suddenly going to end? And why now? I just can't believe there won't be another 4- to 8-year problem, but if it's that debilitating, I'm gone. Like I said before, if I'd known I'd suffer so much for so long, I'd have ended it then.

In better news, the packing is out, and it didn't hurt much at all—just pressure and irritation in the back of my throat for a while. My nose is still very stuffy, like when you have a cold, which is to be expected. Doubt I'll be able to taste or smell much for another week or so. Eating very little has lost me about 5 lb, but there's no way I could sustain a diet of under a thousand calories a day, and it will definitely come right back as soon as I feel a little more human and can taste again.

The doctor said I could lie flat anytime I wanted to, but due to the congestion, I'm unable to. Also, being elevated helps keep me from resisting the urge to roll onto my stomach. He said give my nose two more weeks before I go back on the CPAP. I'm amazed I've been able to breathe out of my mouth. I was really worried about that at first. At least I haven't woken up feeling winded. I'd love to know what my AHI score has been since surgery!

The only other thing the doctor said back at the hospital that I didn't like was that if this procedure doesn't work, my only other option would be nasal valve surgery, but no fucking way! I meant every word of it when I said no more debilitating problems. I'm done with surgery, and I'm done with health issues. Minor shit we all go through is one thing, but things that literally rob me of my life are another. I'm gone when the next debilitating problem hits—or he goes. Whichever comes first.

This procedure does have a huge success rate, though, from what I read, of up to 85%. He didn't just shrink the turbinates; he tweaked my septum as well, and I think he filed some of the bone, if I'm understanding everything correctly. He was more aggressive on the left side, which was giving me more trouble, but of course, they can't shrink them away completely because they're still necessary for humidity and other things.

The doctor said to wait two days before switching from Tylenol back to ibuprofen, which is way easier for me to swallow. I'll have the splints pulled out closer to home on the 4th, and he said that wouldn't hurt. Because I could only get a morning appointment, I may have to cut my sleep short. My whole life is health issues and the schedule game. I can't wait until I no longer have to worry about when I crash and get up, at least for a few weeks.

At least the next appointment will be closer, so we won't have to spend hours driving this old piece of shit, and the doctor shouldn't be 45 minutes late if I'm seeing him that early. I have to rinse my nose with saline, but he says it's healing nicely.

We're just about ready to hit the road again. It's sunnier now and warm and humid, but not unbearably so. It's so frustrating how things are closer to us here than they were when we lived in Maricopa, but take so much longer to get to because of the traffic and long lights.

Written this morning…

Although they called the three prescriptions into the right Walgreens after surgery, they fucked up and called the eye drops to the wrong one so we had to wait another hour before they were transferred over. They’re like miracle drops, though! I noticed a difference after just the first drop in each eye and even more so after the second. I’m to put one drop in each eye every 4 hours for a week.

Just took my mustache bandage off and put a new one on, and yay, the bleeding has finally stopped. Just a little bit of dried blood after doing a saline rinse. No pain or anything. I just feel like I have the head cold from hell, and worry I may be getting a yeast infection due to the antibiotic. Still tired and still not able to get much air through my nose. I can just barely taste anything.

Another thing I didn't like was when he said not to thank him yet until we see if I get any benefit from this procedure. I would be so fucking pissed to have spent all this time and money and gone through all this shit for nothing. So let's hope Tom's assessment of the before-and-after photos he was shown and what I researched is right, and that I have a good chance of breathing much better.

I'm also hoping that what AI told me is going to end up being the case, and that’s that I may not have air escaping through my mouth when I go back to the CPAP. Again, being the pessimist that I am, I have my doubts, but it said that if the nose is blocked, it's only natural that air would take the path of least resistance, which was my mouth. So we'll just see what happens over the next few weeks. It could take weeks and even months to fully heal.

Ugh, just checked the weather and it’s going to storm well past when I need to sleep. Yeah, Tom, because there really isn’t any curse on my sleep, and it’s not that I’m not meant to sleep or anything. Naw, I’ll be sleeping just great soon enough, right?