I Have Insomnia!!! \0/

Okay, so, insomnia doesn't usually occasion glee, but because of the sleep apnea, for a year I have struggled with the problem of being constantly sleepy and the sleep I get never being quite enough. I have had to take three-hour naps every day for probably over a year, and while doing so has kept me functionally rested and able to drive cars without falling asleep at the wheel (well, except for that one time), it's not exactly convenient.

For the last week or so, however, I've had some insomnia. I can't seem to nap during the day as easily as I usually do, and it takes a lot longer to fall asleep at night. Yeah, it's made it a bit harder to get up on the mornings where I haven't been able to get to sleep until 2am, but to be honest? I don't care. :) It's okay to be a bit tired when you've only had four hours sleep. But guess what? I go through my day and when night comes, I'm not so tired that I feel like crying. I'm not so tired that I can't even get up. I'm just normal, everyday, "Gee, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night" tired. I had honestly forgotten what that feels like.

I had a follow-up visit to my doctor yesterday about my new migraine prevention medication and my new dose of anti-depressants (both of which appear to be working well), and I mentioned the insomnia. He said, "I think that's a good sign," and I said, "Yeah, I think so, too." :)

NOTE: I apologize for not crossposting to this blog lately. To read recent posts, please visit my Livejournal:

http://jinjifore.livejournal.com

It's Easy Being Green

I got a new cast today. It is, as the subject line suggests, green (at the request of Her Booness).

Boo had decorated the pink cast with kitties, sunshine, a flamingo and family portraits. I made sure to take pictures, because I was pretty sure the cast would be too unsanitary to keep around. As it turns out, though, the unsanitary inner layers of gauze and stockinette could be peeled away and discarded, allowing me to preserve the fiberglass part. If I can find my camera cable, I'll try to post the pictures.

They did more x-rays, and everything still seems to be in place. The doctor says I'll be in this cast for three more weeks, then in a splint for two weeks, then I'll have one more surgery to take the pins out. The pin removal is apparently miles simpler and less painful than the first surgery, and I should be ready for physical therapy within a couple of weeks. Physical therapy should take six months to a year, so in the shortest-case scenario I'll be finishing up my recovery a little over a year after I first fell. Next time, I'm landing on my head.

I actually had to have two casts put on today. The first time, I felt like the bottom of the cast was too tight, and they had to wait for the fiberglass to harden at bit, then cut off the cast they'd just put on and start over. I felt silly, especially since I could stick my whole finger between my arm and the bottom of the cast and run it all the way around, but I couldn't convince myself that it wasn't cutting off my circulation. My doctor was very patient and kind about it, when in all likelihood it was just me panicking because I (apparently) have an aversion to anything on my body that feels too tight. He made sure he didn't pull the bandage at all when he was wrapping the second cast, and it feels fine. Probably the danger now will be it falling off.

I'm still dropping back on the painkillers, although today has been a "take lots" day because of all the moving around between casts. My pinkie continues to be very sore, and the doctor was a bit surprised when I mentioned it, because apparently it's not a typical symptom. It doesn't impair me much, and I can even type with it now, but I have to be careful when I'm gripping or when I'm rubbing lotion on my hands. I'm not too worried about it, considering all the rearrangement that's gone on inside my hand.

Onward and upward. :) I feel that I can do everything that's really important (well, okay, almost everything :)). I certainly can find plenty of ways to be occupied and happy. The good things are getting better, and the bad things are diminishing. Can't ask for more than that.

Note to Self

Note to self:

If you haven't driven in a month, and therefore haven't drunk your regular post-school-delivery regimen of coffee, it's entirely possible that when you do test your cast-impaired driving ability by going to the coffee shop and drinking a large coffee at four in the afternoon, you will find yourself writing journal posts at 5:45am.

Just FYI.

Five Things

Five Ways In Which My Life Has Improved A Lot:

1. I can type using up to nine fingers with minimal discomfort (for some reason my pinkie is taking a while to get back in the game). Only short periods right now, but considering that on Friday I couldn't even press the keys, this is pretty darn stellar.

2. I can open bottles, cans and other food packaging. This means that my husband no longer has to leave a cooler of sandwiches and a certain number of pre-opened bottles of water for me when he goes to work.

3. I can go up and down the stairs as I darn well please. Free access to the kitchen is good.

4. I can take a shower almost all by myself, instead of having to have the assisstance of my entire family. If I could just figure out how to open and squirt out the shampoo with one hand (okay, and wrap my own right arm in plastic), I'd be golden.

5. I am taking about half the amount of pain medication I was taking last week. It might *sound* fun to spend six weeks stoned on various members of the -codone family, but the reality is that I can't wait to get off the stuff. Obviously, I'm choosing to continue to take it because, well, pain sucks, but I feel that the pain is also approaching the point where I can see the end of it.

In short:

:)

Belated Update

Sorry for not updating lately. I fell and tore a ligament in my wrist about four months ago, and ended up having surgery on it ten days ago. I've been updating my Livejournal, but forgot to include this one in the updates. If you want to read the details (including my recent post about my exciting pink cast) you can find them here:

http://jinjifore.livejournal.com/tag/wrist+injury

Take Care!

An Observation on Marketing

Trivial observation of the day:

I've finally gotten around to reading Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner series. At the time I first ordered the books, there were only three, so I ordered the fourth and got it today.

I would like to mention that I don't measure the font size of every book I read. But when I've just finished reading three books printed in a relatively small font on paper thin enough to make 500 pages a not-exceedingly-thick book, only to open the fourth book and feel like I've accidentally gotten the large print edition, I notice. So, I did a quick page feel, then a page count. Surprise of surprises, the new book, despite being slightly thicker than its companions, runs about 300 pages. That's 200 pages shorter. And whereas the first three clocked around 450 words a page, this one hit closer to 300. Net result? Despite being the same size, Book 4 is about 75,000 words shorter.

I should emphasize that this is not a complaint, merely an observation on the mysteries of book marketing. Presumably someone who has purchased the fourth book wouldn't be doing so unless they had also enjoyed the first three. So what does a publisher do when the fourth book turns out to be something less than 70% the length of the others, and they don't want readers immediately saying "Gosh, it's not nearly as long as the others"? They make it look as long as the others.

It's not even as if this is news. At some point in the last couple of decades book publishers realized that thick books sell better, and so books became thicker. Anyone who's wrestled a Neal Stephenson book into bed knows that sometimes this is achieved through sheer word count. But anyone who's had the chance to compare two printings of the same Nero Wolfe novel published forty years apart can see that this is also achieved through thicker paper and bigger fonts (the refuge of college freshman everywhere).

Again, this is not a criticism of the writing, the book or the author. I have so far enjoyed the series, and in fact I'm looking forward to seeing what the author does with a tighter book (which, really, was one of the few quibbles I had about her in the first place). This is just me marveling at a very simple marketing tool that, had I not just finished reading the previous books, I might never have noticed. Well, until I read them all through again. :)

Sore Throat: 1; Red Cross: 0

Well, crap. I made an appointment to donate blood this morning, but instead I woke up with a sore throat. I did wallow around in denial for a while, but then I sucked it up and admitted to myself that the Red Cross doesn't *want* my infected blood, even if it is O-.

I'm especially bummed because between the three bouts of bronchitis, the feeling crappy after the bronchitis, the feeling crappy before the bronchitis and in general feeling crappy between the bronchitis, it's been well over a year since I donated. Still, there's always next week. :)

In the good news department, my service appointment for my car only cost me $425. You may wonder why this is good news. I will tell you.

On the way to DragonCon, the automatic sliding doors on my van quit working. If it wasn't for Jamie cleverly figuring out that we needed to turn the doors off, we would all have been driven insane by the buzz of the door alarms. As it was, all I had to do was push the doors open and closed manually. This is okay in the short term, but it's a severe drawback in the school drop-off, pick-up lines, which are run on timing similar to a NASCAR pit crew. In addition, I have been receiving complaints from the passengers (ie, Boo) about the lack of air conditioning in the back of the car.

Now, the door problem was, I hoped, a minor one. Maybe a reset or cleaning the contacts. But the A/C problem was one I dreaded. My mom had had similar problems in her last two cars, and both times hadn't fixed them because they were prohibitively expensive. As in $1200 or more of prohibition. Also, if the door issue was some kind of electrical snafu, I could be looking at hours and hours of labor. Needless to say, I was wasn't looking forward it.

You can imagine my relief when it turned out that both problems were relatively simple wiring problems. One of the wires on the door system had gotten kinked up and subsequently shorted out. One hour of labor, no parts. The A/C problem took longer, but it turned out to be an unplugged connection, so the only cost was in the time spent tracking it down. Again, no parts, just the labor.

Now, it might seem that $275 (the maintenance check/upkeep stuff was $150) for two simple wiring problems is a lot of money, and it is, but I was seriously anticipating that these repairs might run me into the $1000 or more range. Electric problems *suck,* and I felt pretty darn lucky that they were solved with only three hours of labor and not with many more expensive hours spent finding expensive problems. Bullet dodged.

ETA: Finally located the thermometer and took my temperature. 99.7. I don't think the Red Cross wants me today.