Tag: Sleep

Sleep Confusion

Since I am going to work again today, I thought I would go to sleep early last night. I finally fell asleep around 11:00 pm but I’m up again at 2:00 am. Worse, I had no idea what time it was when I woke up. I forgot that my mom and I went out for dinner yesterday, and I thought it was dinnertime again. Only when I saw the actual time on my phone did I realize what time it was.

30 day # of hours slept trend

I was hoping my insomnia would get better once I started working. I thought maybe getting back into the work routine would help but I’m still only getting about three hours of sleep. This is better than when I was on PD; I was always super tired and sleeping all the time. However, I doubt three hours per night is sufficient long-term.

No Sleep 2/3/2020

It’s 4:13 am Monday morning and I haven’t slept at all. I went to be around 11:30 pm and basically watched YouTube for five hours. I would try to sleep between videos to no avail.

My right arm was wrapped up pretty tightly with a compression bandage all afternoon and evening. Around 7:00 pm it appears the bleeding has stopped. There is still a compression bandage on the incision site but not as tight. However, there’s pain in both my arm and my abdominal surgery sites. I did get the prescription for Tylenol + Codeine but I’m still just taking regular Tylenol. In addition, my mom has a prescription for Hydrocodone and my dentist gave me a prescription for Vicodin. I also have some leftover Percoset from my heart bypass surgery. That’s a lot of opioid painkillers I’m trying to avoid taking.

Anyway, the post surgery pain and more intense neuropathy in my feet is making sleep very difficult. I’ve already decided not to return to work today (Monday) since I’m still bleeding from a few surgery sites. I’m not going to cardiac rehab either so I have nothing scheduled other than a phone call with my insurance patient advocate.. Maybe it will be a day of naps..

Post Surgery (updated)

Done. The surgery only took about an hour and a half. I think I went into the OR at 9:40 am and woke up by 11:45 am. We were late going into the OR because the surgeon decided last minute to put the fistula into my right arm. He said my veins were kinda small in my left arm and he couldn’t be sure that the fistula would work. The right arm had much better veins.

Dammit.

It seems that once the needles go into the fistula, you can’t really move your arm that much. With my right arm immobilized, I’m not going to be able to do much during dialysis. It already sucks having to sit for four hours, but at least I could do stuff. Now it’s going to be much harder to sit and do nothing.

The peritoneal dialysis catheter is out too. I’m supposed to change the dressing after 24 hours. Now I have to slowly get rid of all my remaining PD supplies: solutions, tubing, cleaning solution, etc. I also have to figure out how to put my temporary crowns back in before trying to eat.

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Another issue, hopefully temporary, with having the fistula on the right arm is side sleeping. It still hurts for me to sleep on my left side, and now I can’t sleep on the right side so I’m stuck sleeping on my back. That’s tolerable with my adjustable bed but on normal flat mattresses, my back and chest still hurts when lying down.

I’m not sure what I could have done. Ask the surgeon to force the fistula into my left arm? Telling him to forget the fistula and use the chest catheter a bit longer? Sigh…

Lingering Chest Pains

It’s been eleven weeks since the heart bypass surgery and I’m preparing to go back to work next week. Overall, recovery has gone well since I’m able to walk, drive, and do most stuff on my own. I also have more energy compared to when I was on peritoneal dialysis. However, I’m still nowhere near 100% recovered yet. I tire pretty quickly when walking or exercising, and there is lingering pain in my chest, especially when sleeping.

I can sleep okay on my back, now that I can raise the head of the bed slightly. Before surgery, I was more of a side sleeper, and right now I can sleep on my right side, though I have to flatten out the bed to do so. Sleeping on the left still causes a lot of pain when I breath. I have to be careful when I try to find a comfortable sleeping position that I don’t accidentally turn to the left. The surgery incision appears to be down the center of my chest so I don’t know why sleeping on the left side hurts while the right side is fine.

No Sleep 1/28/2020 (updated)

I tried going to sleep even earlier Monday night and was able to sleep from 9:53 pm to 1:08 am. It’s now 2:23 am and I’ve been blogging for an hour. I was really tired yesterday with only an hour+ of sleep so I’m going to try and fall asleep again.

I mentioned this renewed lack of sleep hours to my therapist last night and now she really wants me to meet with a psychologist for possible medication. Ugh, I really don’t want more medication, though I’ve heard some of these anti-depressive drugs are amazing and addictive.

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I was able to sleep from ~4:00 am to ~6:30 am before getting up for dialysis. However, that doesn’t add up to 7 hours. I looked at the sleep log and again, Fitbit though I was sleeping when I was actually at a dentist appointment. I thought I was squirming a lot in the dentist chair since it was a very painful experience but the tracker thought I was sleeping from 3:00 pm to 4:00pm. The actual dentist appointment was close to three hours. I guess I need to go in and delete that entry.

No Sleep Again

Ugh, the 2 am curse strikes again. After flushing out the PD catheter, I finally fell asleep at 1:08 am but woke up at 2:29 am. That’s only about an hour and 15 minutes of sleep. It’s 4:45 am now and I’ve been lying in bed trying to sleep again for over two hours.

I did notice that the numbness in my feet is pretty intense, but not in my hands. Usually the numbness feeling in both are correlated. Also, even though there seems to be more numbness, I can feel the carpet more distinctly under my feet. I’m not sure what’s going on since it’s hard to objectively measure the neuropathy. It’s like some of the numbness is wearing off and underneath there is… a different kind of numbness. Maybe the underlying diabetic peripheral neuropathy is worse than before, and it was masked by a side effect of Amiodarone.

It also could be that I’m feeling some of the effect of acupuncture. My acupuncturist did day that she was supposed to cause micro-trauma that my body will repair, which should increase circulation to the affected area. If that’s true, I hope that the numbness will improve soon instead of only getting more intense.

Or maybe nothing is happening, and the numbness at any given time just feels worse than past memory. That would suck.

Sleep Update 1/24/2020

After getting over eight hours of sleep on January 12th, hours slept each night has been highly variable but generally trending down again.

I’m not really sure why sleep has been so elusive. I’ve been going to bed earlier, around 10:00 – 11:00 pm, but would still wake up around 2:30 am then have difficulty falling back asleep. Since the surgery, I’ve tried the following:

  • Changed mattress
  • Purchased a new mattress and bed with adjustable base
  • Removed heating blanket
  • Lowered output on space heater in bedroom
  • Changed cover back to original queen sized comforter

I’m still not getting the temperature right since I woke up all sweaty again last night. Also, the duvet/comforter I was using since surgery is too light in weight. I think I need my heavier comforter that has some weight to it. I sleep better with cooler room temperature but with a heavier blanket to offset the cold.