Some Sad News

Laura got home from Harrison Hotsprings today, after spending the week managing the ECE (Early Childhood Eduction) program for the Canadian Labor Congress.

She met a lady there that turned out to be friends with one of my early-days physiotherapists - Sandra. Sandra handled my physio case for the first couple of weeks in the big house, until I had a relapse and spent some extra time on the 2nd floor of Eagle Ridge Hospital.

When I came back down to the rehab wing, I was fortunate enough to have Ruth - the most senior person there, and the one with the most experience rehabilitating stroke victims. I remember her saying to me "if you stay in the wheelchair a bit longer than most, I'll get you straight from there to walking - no cane, no walker". She did what she said, and I used a cane for a total of about 10 minutes during my entire adventure.

We knew that she had gotten sick sometime shortly after I was released, but heard nothing afterwards.

Laura found out this week that Ruth died of cancer.

Ruth and Me - showing me how to do stairs again

Could This Be Sleep Apnea?

I've a strange phenomenon that I've noticed lately (it may have been going on for some time, but I just started paying attention to it now) - when I'm awake in the middle of the night, I'll breathe regularly and deeply 5 or 6 times, then I have no inclination/motivation to breathe for maybe another 10 seconds or so. Then the urge to breathe comes back again and the cycle repeats itself.

I have no idea if this is only a conscious thing, or whether I do it when asleep as well. If indeed I do it when asleep, I wonder if it could be the source of all the fragmented sleep?

I wrote a post early last month (December) about natural cures for sleep apnea, but I never thought at the time that I might just be talking about me! If indeed that's the problem, then I would say that it would be the rare (1%) kind - Central Sleep Apnea, not Obstructive Sleep Apnea (CSA versus OSA). I'm not overweight and I don't snore that much.

Of all the treatments I talk about in the sleep apnea post, I already do most of them. I sleep on my side, don't drink, don't take muscle relaxants, don't smoke - pretty much the only things I don't do that are common natural treatments for apnea are:

• sleep partially sitting up
• play the didgeridoo

I'm not taking up the didgeridoo quite yet, so maybe I'll try sitting up. It makes sense that most of these recommendations would be for OSA, as that's the most common type, but CSA may be influenced as well. If sleeping partially sitting up doesn't do anything, I'll visit my doctor and ask him about it...

There's another unique phenomenon I've noticed recently - the use of isochronic tones to help me relax and get into a better frame of mind for sleep. I think maybe that counter intuitively they are doing more harm than good. These graphs are from my Zeo system, and they show sleep quality versus the tones:

Overall Sleep Quality (ZQ) versus Tones

Total Sleep (Z) versus Tones

Time in Deep Sleep versus Tones

Time in REM Sleep versus Tones

Times Woken versus Tones

Time Spent Awake versus Tones

From left to right, on all the graphs, the first bar represents no tones, the second bar insomnia-SMR tones, the third is anti-anxiety or meditation tones, and the bar on the far right represents a combination of insomnia-SMR and anxiety/meditation tones (SMR tones are sensorimotor rhythm tones at a frequency that's said to affect insomnia). There is some improvement in the number of time awakened at night by the use of anxiety/meditation tones, but it's offset by the amount of time those awakenings are...

I'm sure that looking at all these graphs drives you crazy, and you could care less, but I'd be interested to know if anyone can see anything else in them ... am I seeing things when I assume the tones do more overall harm than good?

Say Goodbye To Another Activity?

A couple of weeks ago, I tried swimming again.

Many of you will recall that I was advised that swimming would be great therapy, so when I was released from the "Big House" in January 2010 I was looking forward to time back in the pool when we were in Whistler for the Olympics.

Fortunately for me, Laura was in the pool when I attempted to swim across the shallow end - thank god I didn't try the deep end. I sank like a rock. No matter what I did, I couldn't float.

Fast forward to the spring of 2011, when I tried the same thing in Palm Springs. I could sort of float on my back for a few seconds, but that was all. When we took the cruise to Australia, although the pools were salt water and very buoyant, I got the same results.

So two weeks ago was my first "adult swim lesson". Amazingly, I could front crawl about 25m or so - and about the same on my back. Clearly, things were coming back.

Then I tried skiing last week. I thought for sure that this would be an easy one for me, and I figured the lack of a walking/kicking motion (like walking and swimming) would make it very easy.

It wasn't.

I could sort of ski like a real beginner for about an hour. I could link turns on green runs, but could only do about ten of them before running out of steam. Then, after the hour was up, my right foot would start to behave badly and unpredictably, and my entire right leg would tire out.

So I likely could improve on skiing if I was able to go an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon (to give my leg and foot a chance to recover). But at $75 or so a day for a lift ticket, it's an awful expensive process - with no certain outcome. And at that rate it would take weeks.

The swimming lessons are an hour long, and I seem to be able to do that OK. So for now, I'll pass on the skiing and stick to the swimming...

Skiing and the stroke

I'm up here at SilverStar Mountain for the week, skiing with the same folks I've been doing this with for the past twenty years or so (minus the last five). I was hoping that all the bike riding would be a good indicator of how well I'd ski - I even thought it may be "no big deal" and it would be completely normal.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, it's like learning to ski all over again - just that the learning curve is a bit shorter. After about four hours total on the boards, I'm able to link turns and ski the Green Runs pretty easily. I get "nervous" when it gets too steep (or I've been skiing for more than about an hour) and seem to forget how to link turns and tend to ski across the mountain (like a beginner) versus down the mountain. This is all tied to how tired my right leg gets - it runs out of steam after an hour - I think by being unconsciously tense the whole time.

I think the only cure for this is time on the skis, but time on the skis is limited to the time my leg holds up. Kind of a Catch-22. Oh well, the weather is wonderful and the company is great. The fact that I can stand on a mountain is a bonus...

Being a Blogger

I'm pretty excited - I started blogging seriously in November, and have received word that Zeo has chosen my site for their January "Blogger Of The Month". My first post (slightly edited by them) is here.

If you want to see the (very lame - no time to convince David to draw me a real logo) is BuildBetterSleep.com

Happy New Year!

Karen Laura, Rob, Me

In the spirit of looking forward to a new year, and being optimistic about it (which is not entirely my nature), I thought I'd share an article I saw this morning from "Nation of Change". It's US-focused, but whatever happens south of us, effects us. Best to know what's going on. The article is here.

As for resolutions, which I normally don't like to make (and then break), I do have a couple I hope I can stick with this year:

• Re-learn how to swim (a couple of years ago, I could swim really well).
• Cut down on sugar by 2/3. That includes sugar in  my coffee, and (mostly) desserts.
• Get my sleep issues completely figured out. Note that Zeo has picked me up as their "featured blogger" for January for my BuildBetterSleep blog. 

Last year (2011) I resolved that, if I could just walk an extra 200m a month, I could extend my walking range to 8km or so. Unfortunately, I found out that working towards something doesn't mean it's going to happen. I seem to be stuck at about the 5km mark - and that really is just fine with me. I also thought I'd re-learn how to run last summer. Same thing. Can't get past the physical part of it - as much as I wish it, it ain't gonna happen. Good thing I'm now a 50-something year old - there's not too many of us that run anyway. It would be a real bummer to be 12 and unable to run!

I really think that the talking continues to improve at a very slow rate. There are moments when I'm on a roll, and it sounds like "the old Doug" is speaking. I've said to myself, that in five years (2 down, 3 to go), you won't notice any difference.

Now it's time to tackle swimming! I get to try out skiing again next week ... I hope that goes OK.

Happy New Year everyone!