I am sipping the last of my first cup of coffee this morning. The paper cup is still warm, though the coffee is almost gone. It’s a cool summer morning at the leading edge of a new work week and the start of the day. I pause along the path I am walking to sit a moment, breath the morning air and listen to the birds and the sound of distant traffic and construction.

I finished at the sleep lab this morning at 06:00… Rather late compared to my usual wakeup time around 04:30 or 05:00. Weird experience. 10 out of 10 for “interesting”. Hard to say “how I slept”, although the sleep technician asked, as did the questionnaire I filled out after waking up. I did sleep. I am rested. My sleep was about typical for a “good night” for me. A bit restless, and interrupted a couple times, but in this case the restlessness had a lot to do with being wired up every which way, making it tough to be entirely comfortable.
My Traveling Partner isn’t wrong though; I’ve got apnea bad enough that it was easily detected in the first couple hours of the night, causing the technician to come in and wake me long enough to go ahead and put me on a CPAP machine for the rest of the night. Sleeping with that addition further complicated my ability to be comfortable, partly because I was all wired up still, and partly because it was something more to get used to, and in a strange place on top of that.
… I still managed to get enough sleep to be fully rested, and more hours than typical for me. A larger percentage of my time asleep, according to my sleep tracker on my wearable was spent on deep sleep. Win.
This is all very encouraging. It’s an unfortunately slow process though. I now have to wait for the physician to get back to me and schedule time to come in to get my prescription and machine. Did you know you can’t easily get a CPAP machine without a prescription? Lucrative bit of medical industry this sleep stuff, eh? Probably not a coincidence that the doctor here also owns the medical equipment supply business here in town.
… Pretty morning. I feel hopeful. A good time to begin again.

