Aug 24

 I've recently bought a sleeping mouth guard thing.

Apparently it can help with some kinds of snoring, aka, certain aspects of apnoea. Although it's riddled with warnings and caveats that it doesn't really and etc etc. However. There are some interesting anecdotal reports about it from switched on people. So. I've got one just to give it a go. It's very inexpensive and I figure is worth a try, and a junk if it does nothing.

I've tried to sleep with it a couple of nights now, and it's not bad. Not like the suffocation of the cpaps. That being said. I've not managed to sleep with it. The first night it was too "plasticky". Plastic off gassing and, after a little while it made my mouth start to tingle and become "allergic". A fiery kind of reaction to it. Not terribly surprised. I am super sensitive to artificial things around breathing and mouth. I have to be careful about not overdosing on any kind of cleaner, soap etc. It sets me off. Typically asthma is the canary in the cage. I can't do anything that has a heavy perfume or otherwise. Newly washed pillows are a bit of a coin flip. Slightly too much detergent ? Yeah. I am going to be wheezing after 10 minutes. I've always had this ever since I was a kid. My mom had to be a little careful with my pillows in particular. Human type stuff I am better with. I'd rather someone was "dirty" than "over sanitised" if that makes sense. As I've got older, the problem has got slightly worse. Which. Figures.

Anyway. I gave the mouthguard a clean, let it sit in water for some hours, just to let it offgas properly and get rid of as much manufacturing garbage as I could. Which. Made it considerably better. The plasticky smell went away. Mouth irritation dialled way down.

Second night I almost got to sleep with it. But not quite. It kept me hovering in a doze. And dried my mouth out. After a while I removed it and went to sleep. But the good thing was it was ok to sleep with. No smothering. No breathing restriction. It does put pressure on your teeth, but, not an issue.

The idea behind it is that it moves your lower jaw forwards. Either a little, or a lot. And in doing so opens up your airways.

For me, this makes a lot of sense. I have a lot of movement in my lower jaw, and due to the cackhanded way my teeth are, my jaw can sometimes either sit backwards or forwards when I am sleeping. And for sure when it's back, breathing is a bit harder when in a very relaxed state. I guess this comes down to a unique kind of thing that varies from person to person whether the mouthguard is useful or not.

Anyway. We will see if I can get on with it. And also if it does anything.

If nothing else it might help with another issue I've picked up in the last few years. Which is severe twitching / convulsions that sometimes mean I bite down hard in my sleep. Often as not chomping on my tongue in painful fashion. Needless to say it wakes me up entirely. And does a fair bit of damage. It has been a very background, oh, this is yet another fucking issue to deal with, type problem that I have so far not bothered with.

The whole twitching thing I by and large ignore. Even though, on a normal day, it would again probably be one of those things you should talk to a GP about.

Sometimes the twitches are so big they end up pulling muscles in my back, and also wake me up - they are almost always in my sleep or dozing. That being said. The whole left hand side buzzing and "restless legs" have got worse again in the last six months. I can no longer properly lie on my left hand side again. I still do. But I feel it. After a few hours my left hand side has that electric feel up and down. It is a lesser form of the extreme buzzing I had when I was ill. I suspect this is left overs from a suspected dose of shingles that also hit me when I became very ill. I suspect that the shingles ended up fucking up my nerves on my left hand side somewhat. This is apparently typical with shingles. Who knew. To be clear this isn't like sleeping on your arm or something like that. It's very... "internal". And it does feel like an electric buzz. Not the static you get when you lie on an arm. This is something else again. Like sticking your fingers in a plug socket. I had exactly the same thing in spades when I was severely ill. It was so bad back then that I couldn't even roll over for 20 seconds on my left hand side without it squealing like a pig. I ended up sleeping on my right for months, which, weirdly, when you do that for that long, also starts to be a problem. I can remember at times just being exhausted from having to sleep in a specific single position, and sometimes in a half doze rolling onto my left side for "relief", only to wake up an hour later with *everything* on my left raging on fire. Interesting experience. Would not recommend.

In any case. The twitches. Ranging from minor "background hum" twitch. Like a small tic. All the way up to large "convulsion" type twitch. Typically on the small side. But sometimes on the larger side. They, like much of everything else with me, come and go in intensity over a lazy time arc measured in weeks if not months.

Another bit of a smoking gun with such things, there have been a few times when I have twitched hard - actually when awake - and its caused some muscle or other to lock up. And I cannot reproduce it. I can't consciously move my muscles in such a way to get the same twitch. At all. Which is fascinating. It's like doing something and then not consciously being able to repeat it. How did I do that ?! The answer, duh, is that it's not a conscious controlled thing. Not a normal nervous system response thing. It's an indication your nervous system has shorted out. Like sticking wires in your muscle and it kicks. But you can't do that ordinarily.

Very low background anxiety. Can also be a sign of MS.

Ho ho.

That old chestnut.

Where the MS attacks the sheathing of nerves and makes them fire. Because. You know. It's gnawing on the wire insulation.

I'm not fretting about MS though. It is still possible that's what I have. As some unexplored longshot. But meh. I have given up worrying about it or thinking about it. If it is, it is. And it's not like any fucker will bother checking or treating it until it's too late anyway.

In any case.

I just ignore the twitches et al.

I am aware it's "not good". But it's one of a long list of also rans in me that doesn't get a lot of oxygen given all the rest of the shit going on with me. 

It's also one of the minor ticks I have on my list about, oh, vitamin B deficiencies tend to also fuck with your nerves. Uh huh. Pay attention to taking your supplements. Which. Sometimes I am good at. And sometimes I am terrible at. Because consistency for me is a hard problem.

Today.

I am feeling like mild garbage. I've had worse. But it's one of those days where I am not going to get out of a pit of feeling like shit. Unless. I decide to sleep half the day away. Ho hum.

Last night I had a set of dreams that were Not Good.

I dreamed of Athena. And doing social things.

I dreamed she was still here. And happy. And doing things.

And then. Indescribable. I became suddenly aware that I had in fact lost her. And she was not here. She was gone. Dead. And like a collapsing star all that grief and pain rushed in on me and crushed me flat.

Indescribable. Like I say. It was such a massive rush of negative horrible emotion. And the kicker.

The dreams repeated it. I did it again. And again.

By the third time, in my dream, I was whispering oh no, no no, not again. Not again. I was aware I was reliving as if for the first time, the feeling of losing her.

Needless to say. I was awful.

On the third time. I woke up. Having. I don't know. Some kind of breathing fit. I don't know. Panting super fast, super shallow. Like super panicked. Or somesuch.

Ho hum.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see my body was in a severe state of anguish.

Sigh.

I wonder sometimes about the paths I walk along.

The truly fucking terrible experiences I have. And that no one sees. Sometimes part of me wishes I could share them. Just. To make people aware. Hey. This is what I go through. See. It sucks. But then again. I think. Why on earth would I give that level of pain to someone. Even in passing. I suppose on the one hand I wish I could share with people how much I suffer. On the other hand. I wouldn't want anyone else to suffer. Ho ho. In many ways. One of my critical traits.

Perhaps I'm just an olympic level whiner.

But even my cynical self doesn't believe that.

Saw a couple of those half crappy pictures with text things on facebag today. "crappy". Sometimes really not crappy at all.

The first -

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Losing a dog is hard. VERY HARD.

Eesh. Yes.

The second -

A dog's love fills the cracks in our broken hearts.

Sigh.

For fucks sake.

Yes.

All the feels.

Enough of making me sad facebag. Time for a cup of tea and try to feel less like gently warmed up garbage.