|
I arrived in Austin five days ago. I have yet to sleep. Traveling is hard for me because any deviation from my regular sleep habits hurts. My room back home is completely dedicated to sleep with climate control, dark walls and ceiling, fuckin rawkin mattress, expensive sheets, swedish pillows. Hotel rooms just can't offer you all of that. They don't make me sleep or anything, but every little bit helps. When you sleep for 8 minutes a night, inching that up to 10 minutes can really make a huge difference.
This has made me more serious about having surgery. There is a new procedure called the Pillar Procedure. When you have apnea, the soft pallate at the back of your throat relaxes and collapses, cutting off your supply of air. Your brain realizes this and "wakes" you up momentarily to take a breath. The Pillar Procedure involves inserting 3 foam pillars into that soft pallate to make it more rigid and hopefully stop this from happening. It's about a 15 minute procedure and they say you can do it on your lunch break and return to work. If you're not squeamish, you can go to http://restoremedical.com/video.asp and actually watch them fucking do it. It scared the bejesus out of me.
Ryan Short wrote an article about the Pillar Procedure in the Dallas Voice. It featured me and a prominent doctor in the field. Even though Ryan fabricated some stories about me sleep walking to the kitchen and getting a knife, acting out a dream that I wanted cake ??????? which is embarassing because sleep walking has nothing to do with acting out dreams. But regardless, I emailed that doctor asking him if he would meet with me for free. I know that doctors don't typically do pro bono work, but he mentioned to Ryan that he would like to meet me and I'd basically promise to have surgery if he would do that, so I figured it was worth a shot. What sucks is that it costs $2,000 to get stabbed in the throat. And I'm all but certain that my new insurance company doesn't take sleep medicine seriously.
I have got to try something. I'm sick of people perceiving me as lazy and irresponsible. It's like, fuck, doesn't anyone ever show up to work tired for respectable reasons? Everyone always assumes I am hungover. It sucks. I am seriously only hungover like 1 out of every 3 times I'm accused. If this pillar shit doesn't work, I'm gonna get a g*d damned tracheotomy and bypass this whole problem once and for all.
Sorry if this entry was a bit scattered, there's a Simple Life marathon on the tele and I am thoroughly amused. It's hot.
| 