Well here it is, the day of my hospital nap… OF SCIENCE, and I have nothing particularly on my mind that I want to write about. I am feeling lazy and self-indulgent, and finding it hard to concentrate on any one thing for all that long. It’s a nice sunny day out, and I am feeling silly.

Plus, I have this infection under the fingernail of one of my primary typing fingers, the one between the middle finger and the thumb of my right hand, and that is making typing a little painful. Also using the mouse, as that just happens to be my primary clicking finger. Talk about hurting me where I live.

So that has thrown me off a little. But what the hell, the doctor will take care of it when I see him on Tuesday, and until then I can shift my typing a little and try to both type with less force (and therefore less pain) and favour the middle finger a little more.

I could theoretically also move the mouse to the other side of my monitor and use my left hand for mousing. I have used both hands to mouse at various times. But it is always painful and awkward to switch and it doesn’t seem worth it just for a temporary illness.

I will just muddle through somehow.

As predicted, I am no longer super sleepy. I got that out of my system yesterday. I feel kind of lazy, but that is nowhere near being the same thing as my periods of hypersomnia. Usually, this kind of laziness merely result in taking an unusual amount of pleasure in lying in bed, just daydreaming, or sleeping very very lightly.

And seeing as I will be lying around in bed for science (well, and my own personal health… mostly that, actually) tonight, I supposed being in the sort of mood where that is enjoyable is a good thing.

A lot of little thoughts run through my head in anticipation. Will I be in a private room? I sure as hell hope so. This is supposed to be as much like my “normal” sleep as possible, and I do not usually have one to three other people in my room with me, with only curtains for privacy.

Worse would have to be trying to sleep on the ward. I am being admitted through Emergency, and that conjures up visions of having to try to sleep not just covered in sensors but in the loud, cold, scary, depressing, and weird-smelling emergency room.

I have never been admitted to Richmond Hospital proper before, but I have had to go to emergency there a couple of times and like must emergency rooms, it is not a nice or fun place in any way.

So hopefully, I will not end up trying to sleep there. A “semi-private” (to me, that’s like being semi-pregnant… it’s private, or it isn’t) room would be okay, as long as my roommates are not loud or otherwise disruptive. If I am lucky, this will be one of those random lulls in hospital demand and I won’t have to worry much about other patients.

Another little worry : if I am going to be covered in sensors and possibly have tubes stuck places, how the heck do I get up to use the bathroom? At home, I go pee like five times a day. There is no chance I will be able to go all the time between 8:30 pm to possibly 7 am without needing to take a leak at least twice. So uh… how do I get up and go wee?

I get a terrible feeling that the answer is that I do not. I will be expected to make use of a bedpan, something I have avoided entirely in my life up to this point. Even when I had to spend ten days in hospital after my gall bladder operation, by far my longest hospital stay since I was born, I managed to avoid using the bedpan. I made it to the bathroom somehow, or held it in till I could. I have very strong feelings about bathroom dignity (I don’t even use urinals, for God’s sake) and I refuse to use a bedpan unless there is literally no other possible choice.

But if they have mt all covered in a million sticky sensor pads, all of which are wired into a console of some sort, then they are not exactly going to want to take them all off me just so I can go have a pee and then do them all back up when I get back, are they?

And the only alternative to the bedpan in that case is the catheter, and while, like I mentioned, I have been there before, I would really rather not go there again.

So I may have to finally surrender to the bedpan. I hoped to go my whole life without having to do so, but if it’s bedpan or catheter, I guess I will have to go bedpan.

Honestly, I would rather just pee in a bottle. Seems slightly more dignified.

But whatever. Whatever happens, happens. It’s just one night of my life, less then twelve hours, and when it’s done, it’s done, and I will have some anecdotes and some memories and hopefully some medically useful information added to my medical files.

Apparently, the province has stopped paying for CPAP machines, so even if my sleep apnea is clinically confirmed, I have no idea what will be done about it.

As far as I know, CPAP and other related tech are the only treatment that works for sleep apnea. Even the surgical techniques of the past had only limited success. There is no pill or brace or dental device that can keep your airways open when you sleep if you are a fattie like me.

So it might be that the takeaway from all this medical monitoring is simply “Yup. You got sleep apnea. Sucks to be you, pal!”

But whatever. Wish me well, folks!