Intuition Juice

I *hate* wearing jewelry.  I don’t even wear earrings on a regular basis.  And rings, bracelets, or watches- no thank you!  I had a sleep study (again- the third one) before I have my WLS and THIS time it came back negative for narcolepsy (the first one said yes you have narcolepsy let’s drug you up (and it WORKED!), the second one said oh maybe you have narcolepsy but you are fat so lose some weight and come back (F@$% YOU!)) so now I have to wear this actigraphy watch for TWO WEEKS.  What the hell is an actigraphy watch right?

From the Wiki’s:

Actigraphy is a relatively non-invasive method of monitoring human rest/activity cycles. A small actigraph unit, also called an actimetry sensor, is worn by a patient to measure gross motor activity. Motor activity often under test is that of the wrist, measured by an actigraph in a wrist-watch-like package. The unit continually records the movements it undergoes. The data is later read to a computer where it can be analyzed.  The unit itself is an electronic device which generally consists of

• a piezoelectric accelerometer,
• a low-pass filter which filters out everything except the 2-3 Hz band, thereby ensuring external vibrations are ignored,
• a timer to start/stop the actigraph at specific times, and to accumulate values for a specific time frame,
• a memory to store the resulting values, and
• an interface, usually USB or serial, to program the timer and download the data from memory.

It looks like this:

It is annoying as hell.  I can’t take it off.  It’s waterproof so I can go swimming and shower with it on even.  Hopefully this will give the doctor something to work with so I can finally get my sleep issues dealt with again.  When I was being treated for narcolepsy I was sleeping so well and I had more energy and was happy and less sick.  Oh what is narcolepsy?  It’s a fun little disease let me tell you!

Again from the Wiki’s:

Narcolepsy is a chronic sleep disorder, or dyssomnia. The condition is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in which a person experiences extreme fatigue and possibly falls asleep at inappropriate times, such as while at work or at school. A narcoleptic will most likely experience disturbed nocturnal sleep and also abnormal daytime sleep pattern, which is often confused with insomnia. When a person with narcolepsy falls asleep they will generally experience the REM stage of sleep within 10 minutes; whereas most people do not experience REM sleep until after 30 minutes.

I have all the symptoms of narcolepsy and narcolepsy medications treats my issues but now this sleep doctor is telling me all the other doctors are wrong and I have other sleep disorder I have never heard of (and can’t remember the name nor find any info about it online!) where the brain doesn’t produce enough of the sleep chemicals in the brain and it is treated with stimulants like Ritalin.  So a stimulant is supposed to help me sleep better at night?!  According to all the research and information I have gathered with my kids being on stimulants for ADHD it is often associated with difficulty sleeping!

*Sigh* We will just have to see how this turns out.  The one thing that has been consistent is I DO NOT have sleep apnea (not ALL fat people have it thank you very much stuck up doctor in Seattle!) and I DO NOT snore (not ALL fat people snore!).

Tags: antigraphy, antigraphy watch, narcolepsy, sleep disorders, sleep study