I'm now in the somewhat ridiculous position of setting three alarms (two on Alexa, one on my phone) to wake me up in time to go to bed at 02:00 or a little after. For several nights now I've fallen asleep at 01:30 or so and not woken up - still in my study chair - until something well after 15:00. Sue says she thinks I've got narcolepsy (I disagree!)
The sensible thing might be to go to bed rather earlier but I know from long experience as a night owl that that rarely works. I need those couple of hours after midnight when I catch up on TV, write blog posts, do stuff for the myeloma groups, and generally get on with stuff on the computer. In years gone by I would tie trout flies into the early hours - the nature of what I do has changed over the years, but the need for that active and engaged time stays the same. If I go to bed a couple of hours early I just don't sleep - unless it's really early like 21:00 or so.
I had an NHS letter yesterday with a 'phone appointment on Friday morning with a respiratory consultant, so I'm hoping that will get somewhere on the sleep apnea situation. If I have got it, as I strongly suspect, then a CPAP machine should improve quality of sleep with less tiredness and falling asleep during the day. And that would make life a lot better...
I've got a new under-mattress sleep analyser that claims to detect sleep apnea and lots of other things. Bit of a nightmare getting the associated app to recognise it but got there in the end after a couple of factory resets. First night tonight, along with my Oura ring which monitors various aspects of sleep, my continuous O2 monitor, and my snore recorder. If that lot can't provide some evidence, I'm not sure what could.
No more proto-rashes, and the ankle oedema is almost zero on the right but still quite marked on the left.
Otherwise, things go as normal. A fairly good boules morning at Hanbury Gardens (Epping) on Monday and a good evening yesterday at Tower - lost one match narrowly and won the other against the same opponents by a comfortable margin. And of course I'll be back at Birchanger (weather permitting) later today.
Next week will include the four-weekly haematologist consultation and the Zometa drip etc. That's the last week of Cycle 17 of "consolidation" on dex and len - 68 weeks so far and still in remission although I'm increasingly aware of the toll those drugs take on top of doing their job of keeping the myeloma suppressed. If nothing else, I'm just too slow getting around and doing things.
Fields at Ongar - an easy walk from the car park and piste:
The two lakes at Marks Hall in beautiful late September sun.
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