Damn Bathroom Scale

I found out today that if I lean from side to side on the bathroom scale, the number changes.

If I lean to the right, the weight will increase a few pounds, but not more, no matte how much more I lean to the right.

If I lean to the left, I can get it to drop as much as 25 LBS,. If I lean more, the computer inside errors out, showing the text: Err

A spread of 27 pounds! Dang, i can't trust the numbers it provides much. I can assume I always stand with the same position - muscular memory and all that.

But What I will do is lean all the way to the left, and see what was the last number shown before the Error out. I won't say that is my weight, but it can be used as a relative measure of weight loss over time.

Once you get over 250 LBS, bathroom scales just don't work.

Spnal Stimulator & Sleep Pattern

When I first got the spinal stimulator, there was no way I could fall asleep with it turned on. They Man from Boston Scientific recommended that I do so.

After a few months, I found myself turning it off late in the day because I felt like it was iritatting or frying my nerves. There would be a ghost aftereffect, where it still felt like it was turned on after I turned it off. It would not be as strong, but definitely felt like it was on. Then it would stop in about an hour - I guess, dissapating the bundled energy. I suspect not all the energy is going into the spine and up the spinal column. It has to go somewhere...

After several months, I could tolerate the stimulation better. I would use the stimulator all day, but turn it off at bed time. As time went by, I would sometimes forget to turn it off before I went to bed. When I sleep with the stimulator on, I sleep for much shorter periods, between 5 and 7 hours. I am not waking up because I can feel the stimulator. I am waking up because I feel like waking up. I may not be refreshed, but I feel like I can definitlely wake up.

I have purposely slept with the stimulator on this week. It has been 3 days. The first 2 days I was exhausted because I did too much during the day, and I slept 14, and 12 hours. Yesterday was a bitch. It was one of those computer programming problem days where your patience is stretched to its limit and far beyond. It just won't give me what I want, no matter how I ask it. I had to stop 3 times during the day to take a calm down break. And then I slept from 1:30 AM to 6:30 AM. Go figure?

Just can't get started

I just can't wake up today. I don't know what it is. I have had plenty of nutrients, Blue Light Therapy, and naps during the day. But my movement is so slow, I feel like I am in a vat of syrup. I am constantly making typos. My thoughts are slow. I have been on the edge of lucidity all day. It is almost 8PM, and I feel like I could go to sleep and sleep all night right now.

I re-read the journal entry I made last night. It triggered a thought I have been wanting to record for a long time which may explain why I am making so many typos.

We have diagnosed neuropathy in two places in my body: the ankles and the spine. There was testing done that allowed us to know there is no neuropathy in the knees and hips, even before my hips were replaced.

I believe I am getting neuropathy in the wrists. I have been noticing decreased sensitivity in the tip of index finger on both hands, getting gradually worse over the last year. I am noticing it in the tips of all the fingers now except the little fingers.

another interesting tidbit related to this is touch screens. Touch screens often do not sense my index finger. I have to switch to a different finger for it to sense the selection. Touch screens are triggered by the current that flows over the surface of the skin. Its 300 Megahertz, the same frequency as the energy passing through our brains and nervous system. This energy is one of the things measured during a lie detector test. I never thought about this, but the energy flowing around the skin probably comes from the nerve endings closest to the surface of the skin. If a patch of nerve endings is having transmission problems due to wearing away of nerve tissue prior to the endpoint, then there would be a hole or dead space in the electrical field

It's 5:50 AM

I awoke at 5:50 AM. My body is still asleep, responds slowly. Why did I wake up? I am a little thirsty, not hungry,don' have to go to bathroom. There is no physical need strong enough to have awoken me.

I can tell that I have been dreaming a lot more now.

Then I hear, far away in the distance, thunder. It is barely audible. as I get up, find my glasses, take seroquel and 5 grams of spirulina, I can hear the thunder coming closer. Then finally a slight rain which didn't last long, moved over my apaprtment, and continued on its way.

My guess - the increase of static electricity in the air woke my up. I guess it doesn't take much.
Now that the storm is passing, we'll see if there are any changes. I still here thunder, quietly, but not distant. Right now, there was one close, but no rain drops.

I wanted to record something new I learned about the CPAP face mask. I did record earlier how putting bandaids on my face help not have air leaks. I tried some thing new with the bandaids, the the mask worked even better, I was putting a small bandaid of the the bridge of my nose, just below the eye level, then 2 on each side of the nose in the recessed wrinkle line. I added one more bandaid, connecting to the bandaid from the bridge of the nose, going straight up. This helps with air leaking into the eyes. Also, the overall effect is that I do not have to pull the mask straps so tight so their are no leaks.

Before I did this change, sometimes I had to pull it so tight that it would border on being painful. Now I can back off from that allot.

I can hear constant raindrops from a light rain. The thunder is far in the distance. I saw no flashes of lightning sneak in through the gaps on the outer edge of the dark curtains we use in my room.

I feel weary and groggy, perhaps enough to fall asleep. I am going to make some oatmeal tea to see if tat helps.

It is annoying how many typing errors and poor word choices I am making as I write this. A new thing has started to to show up where I forget to hit a key or don't hit it hard enough to be sensed by the device drivers plugged-in to the Computer OS. It is becoming more and mroe common to see as much as 3 letters missing from the middle of the word. Like "thinking" would appear as thin to thing. I am guessing that this is some kind of spelling auto-correction tkaing place that I don't notice because I am looking at the keyboard. I know I typed those keys - i am certain.

Is I typed the last word "certain" in the paragraph above, i actually touched the area in the groove in between the rows of keys. I got the 'c' but the "er" was not on screen/

I hear nothing outside except barely audible gugrgling of the drainage water,

And now I can barely stay awake,

I am getting more energy

This is day 5 of taking large amounts of Spirulina daily (between 20 and 30 grams).
Energy is up. Focus is up. I am working faster. I RODE MY TRIKE today.
It got not blazingly hot at 8PM, and it was still light enough outside. I rode for about 15 minutes - really enjoyed it,

As time goes by, I want to increase it until I know the amount which is too much and it causes weight gain. Then i will back off from there. It is working about the cravings. If I keep taking enough during the day, I don't feel hungry. So I have to remember to take them, otherwise intead of feeling hungry, I start to feel tired and confused. When I keep up the intake, then there are no cravings.

My friend Floyd was telling me that for him it is the smell of food that is so hard to resist. When i iold him I had no sense of smell, it was so funny, He had this look on his face like: You lucky bastard!

Floyd told me of a way to order Sirulina online, it is called "nuts online". Are they talking about the food or the people that work there? but they do sell quality Spirulna at a tenth of the price you get it in Health Food Stores, like Whole Foods. but you have to buy 50 LBS of powder ot once, but for only 5 dollars. The savings is not having the factories pit it in jars for you and date stamp them

I made more friends today in W101. Sarah Icecaster and Robert BearHunter.

I am seriously considering getting an iPad, It is just the right size for me. I haven't been taking my scriptures to Church because the only ones I can read easily are huge. I struggle borrowing others scriptures, because the font is so small, but I have read them so many times I can guess the words. I might even rwrite some apps for ir

Back on Spirulina again

I was finding myself feeling hungry all the time again, which means not enough Spirulina. I changed my diet back to normal food months ago due to something which I no longer remember.

Noe I take as much Spirulina as I want, no limits. I do still some juice and maybe some tuna each day. I want to see what the amount of Spirulina I eat that would cause weight gain, so that I know that upper limit. I stopped using it before because I would have strong cravings for sugar. Floyd and the WWW agree that in that case, I should have taken more Spirulina until the craving left.

One thing I do know since I made this change 3 days ago. I have more energy, I think more clearly, and I fall asleep more easily.

I decided to wear the Diddle Tie Katie gave me when she was an exchange student in Germany. I think that would be appropriate for Father's Day, and I want to see if my German friend recognizes the character.

Fessing Up

As terrible as this sounds, I have to admit that I am a human supremist.
All life is sacred, but some life is more sacred than others - see Animal Farm

Dang it

I haven't taken morning meds for 2 days now. I feel OK, but why don't I remember to do this. I did a lot of things today before working. I ordered meds online and on the phone, other stuff. Why did I forget that part?

Sleep - things to record

1. Put the mask on correctly. It is not enough to pull the straps on the back off the head downward. You need to check to make sure the upper strap passes just over the ear on both sides of the head.

2. The area around the nose and above the mouth are sensitive. I am waking up multiple times to run spots around the nose because of air leaks, moisture, or it just tickles. To mitigate this:
Wear band aids over the bridge of the nose and in the crease on each side of the nose.
I cannot wear a bandaid under the nose because it keeps coming off
Take benedryl at night - with the MD's OK - it is an antihistamine, and I may not be able to take it

3. Take alpazoram at night. I have been doing this for months now, but forgot to do it this week. I took it with morning meds like I did for years previous. The result was that I only slept 3 to 4 hours, then woke up. The wake up might be due to bodily needs, but I am not able to sleep again afterwards.

4. When I wake up at night, take seroquel to help fall back asleep - this has been part of my regimine for a long time.

5. I have noticed for a long time that sweets just before bed help me fall asleep. It causes a sugar increase followed by a sugar low - and I am able to fall asleep during the sugar low. The problem with this is that this is the worst time to eat sweets, and it is easy to get too much sugar. I have found that making what I call "Oat meal tea" will help. I just put 1/4 cup of oatmeal into a large cup with 1 cup or more of water. I boil this in microwave for several minutes. I haven';t determined the number of minutes yet - 5 is too long. I also have to watch how much water. Both os these items cause spill over at boil if I do too much . Then I add honey. I don't need to eat the oatmeal, but usually due. This cannot be rolled oats. it has to be steel cut milled oats - like McCann's Irish oatmeal.

New Joke

I made up this joke a few days ago. Then I forgot it. It came back today asking to be recorded. It is too questionable for facebook (even for me), so I'll record it here for those few people who love me enough to read this.

How many porn stars does it take to screw in a prophylactic?

Well, that depends on your subscription fees....

I can be so dumb

I figured out the reason why I could not sleep this week. It was my work laptop. I forgot to reconfigure it so it turned off the blue light. So every hour exposed to the blue light meant 4 hours of not being able to fall asleep. And since I was not sleepy, why not get more work done - so I didn't sleep for a long long time. for me, works better than caffeine.

so now my laptop display is mostly GREEN

Wannabe sleepin

I worked too long today. It's good that I had the energy, but now I am too wound up to sleep. I have been awake for 16 hours now - and not even a hint of sleep.

It has been a good week. At the suggestion of my MD, I have started eating Yogurt. Karen told me a long time ago that Yogurt was lactose free. We tried an experiment buying a frozen yogurt cake. It was a disaster. I got really sick. My thoughts now are that they probably added real milk so that the yogurt would remain solid when frozen. I read labels closely this time, and got just cultured milk. My first taste was soooo goood.

It gave me memories of my childhood. That is a common thing for people who have a sense of smell, but this was only the second time it has happened to me. The first time was eating maple flavored pop-tarts. It reminded me of hanging out with James in his bedroom playing video games or watching movies. Good times!

I got some control over sleep cycle during the week. I was able to attend church. The deciding factor of attending church is "is it safe for me to drive?". I went 6 weeks not being able to attend. This time, I stayed the whole 3 hours, and was wide awake the whole time.

I think the yogurt helped my sleep cycle. The sleep cycle is out of control now because I forgot to take morning meds on Memorial Day.

I have been trying to get a group together in Wizard101 in order to do a very difficult dungeon called "The Waterworks". It is so hard, people lose resolve and keep quitting mid-dungeon. I tried multiple times, and usually found myself alone in the last room of the dungeon. It is impossible to do that alone. So the last time when someone said they wanted to leave, I got mad and berated them. They stayed, and we were able to finish it - just the 2 of us. It is designed require 4 players, so we really had to stretch. But we finally got it - took 5 hours.