Dr.Strange

When my brain finally had the advantage of REM sleep to wipe out the cobwebs that had been built up over the preceding years, dreaming was not the only side effect. Far from it in fact, after all I did not go through surgery just to re-gain that ability. Although in a way I suppose I did, for with my dreams came the real benefit of REM sleep. My overall thinking and functioning and energy levels improved dramatically, and with it I felt a renewed sense of purpose, clarity and thought. In a rather hilarious moment, I remember having a conversation with my wife a month or so after my surgery, in which I finished 3 different conversations I had left unfinished over the preceding year. What I mean when I say that, is that in my exhaustion my mind would come to a point of stagnation, where new thoughts are not possible. The soil is simply not fertile enough to bloom. There were no more fish in the sea or birds in the sky. I covered all 3 types of land there so the metaphor should really stick. Point being that I would often have to sacrifice certain thoughts in favor of others. My brain could only handle a certain number of things a day, and even then it frequently let me down. The processing time and  hard disk space were at all time low. This, coupled with constant fatigue made things unpleasant. What developed in that time was a monthly cycle of depression. I would work myself up into a positive enough space to get out there and do as much work as I could, before collapsing at home for at least a week every month. As a result of this, there were a few conversations or issues I had to deal with, that I had pushed to the back of my mind, and waited for my subconscious to figure out. I was however blindsided by the fact that my subconsious was all backed up. It was not until a month after my surgery that the things I remembered I wanted to talk about with my wife came flooding back, complete with answers and conclusions I could not formulate before.

It was both alarming and amazing at the same time. Alarming because I realized just how low I must have been functioning before, and amazing because effective honest communication had been achieved again. Another moment that had a similar effect was at a Friday lunch with my family, where they all commented on how energetic and lively I seemed post-surgery. I didn’t register anything accept happiness at the time, that they saw a difference in me, it validated all the decisions I had made until that point. But afterword’s that happiness was replaced with a deep sense of sorrow. I wondered to myself, just how much had I fallen? How bad must it have been, that my whole family felt the effect, and subsequently the difference after the fact? It was a cathartic moment, as I felt intense pain and relief, for it was the second, and final justification, along with my dreams, that this was all real and not just a fantasy I created in my head. That, I’m glad to say, is where my sleep apnea story ends. And thank god for that.

It was in this vibrant post-surgical world that I fell in love with notebook’s for the first time. I had always had notebooks but my relationship with them was purely business. I usually used them for school or work and I hated the damn things, they were never where I expected them to be and never had anything in them I cared about. But after a few years of unfulfilled, unrealized thoughts, I took to the idea of writing my ideas down constantly. I never wanted to have a thought and not finish it ever again, and so I began the process of taking notes. Before I could begin that however I had to find the notebook in itself. And that did not take long as most stationary shops have this particular brand in stock, and I can I assure you all that there is no better notebook manufacturer on God’s mostly blue earth, than  RHODIA. God damn these things are beautiful, they open with grace and close with dignity. Their pages invite you to pour your words into them and you do, effortlessly. This is made even more effortless with the help of the best pen ever made. I am talking, of course, about the Uniball Eye Fine. What a piece of precision engineering that thing is. Seriously though, it is a marvelous pen if you write fast and want your hand to glide across the page like a seasoned wizard.

With these two tools at my disposal, I began chronicling my every thought, and still do to this day. Although occasionally I’ll use a note app on my phone if I happen to be out of the house or away from my notebooks. The reason being that I simply cannot stand the thought of having an idea and forgetting it. Especially not after what I had already experienced. I wanted to take advantage of my now fully functioning brain and make sure to keep track of everything I think about. The downside of this is that I now of course have way too many notes, and have to spend alot of time sifting through them. I am however very comfortable with the knowledge that all my very best (and worst) ideas they are at least within my grasp.

Finally a little update on what we did today. We woke up, had coffee, a muffin and a sandwich at Starbucks, and went to see Dr. Strange. I won’t spoil anything in the film, but if you want to see it without anyone else’s opinion going through your mind, stop reading now.

My initial reaction is that its good. They overdid that environmental kaleidoscope effect in my opinion, but I can forgive that. Solid performance by the Batch and the rest of the crew, and I have to say Dr. Strange himself instantly became one of the more intriguing marvel superheroes to me. Overall, I give this film a solid B+/A- depending on my mood.

That was the reason I kept you all waiting on the blog today, we woke up with just enough time to get a cup of coffee and make the 3pm show. I will still post on Sundays, just not in the wee hours of the morning (as if I’ve ever done that anyway).

More on other things tomorrow.

Surgery

3 days. In case you were wondering what the answer to the question: How long before this whole blog thing becomes more troublesome than you thought? Its 3 days. Why troublesome? Because suddenly your thoughts are out there and you have to keep adding to them like a deranged loon somewhat capable of coherent sentences. Jokes on you though I don’t actually think anything I write on here. That’s right, this is just a complete waste of my time and yours. It is Saturday though so I’m feeling Ultra-Crabby today. I should probably take the weekends off from blogging, I quite like the sound of that. But I signed off yesterdays with ‘More on that tomorrow’, so to not post today would make me less than honorable and I do not want that. On to our previous topic.

2 minutes. That’s the amount of time it takes to go from relief to have found the correct doctor and course of action, to absolute fear that you have to have surgery. In 2 minutes all the doubts I had about my needing surgery come flooding back. ‘You don’t actually have sleep apnea, you’re just really lazy’. ‘You made it all up, you’re crazy, you know this’. Suddenly it was all in my head again, every single part of me that was so sure I had a problem that needed fixing, evaporated. Gone. Just like that. That’s the power of fear. It can make you think the most ridiculous things, not matter how much evidence you have in front of you. Even my mother (a fantastic woman by the way #top5alltime) had to confirm with Dr. Ashraf that I actually need this surgery. To which he replied ‘yes’. Unfortunately for her, and me I suppose, there is still the possibility that he himself is a super demon with infinitely better acting skills than the one that preceded him. He could have realized the minute I walked through the door that he was going to play into my delusional sleep apnea narrative to make his money. I guess we will never know.

It was not the post-surgery process I was dreading, although that was very weird. And it wasn’t the amount of people who would undoubtedly see my penis under the flimsy hospital gown. Which was 2 by the way, I’m pretty sure my father and the nurse who was readying me before the operation got a look. It was all very awkward. But my fear came from the knowledge that I would be put under. Under with the possibility of staying there forever.

I’m not being melodramatic, it’s really how I think. Everything in life is down to probabilities. And I do NOT like increasing the risk of any harm to myself unless I really need to. And so the probability of dying during surgery is quite naturally higher than that probability when not undergoing surgery. That is a fact my brain does not and will not ever accept in a calm way. Even though I knew my chances of dying from the anesthetic or from sudden catastrophic nose trauma were pretty slim, they were still higher than 0%.

On top of all that, the thought of being made unconscious really did not sit well with me. By all means if you’re going to slice my nose open and break it apart just to put it back together again, put me under. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. The anesthesia they gave me began to kick in just as I entered the surgery room, where a nurse flirted with me in some vague way, to which I replied ‘No, I’m married unfortunately‘.

After the surgery all the pain is in your throat. It’s basically all filled up with blood and mucus, which prompted me to start hurling up buckets of the stuff while my wife rushed to the bathroom to do more of the same. I don’t remember much of the post surgery period which lasted around 2/3 weeks. All I know is the first few days were the hardest on my wife especially. But she pulled me through and got through it herself god bless her.

The funniest moment after surgery was the first time I took the bandages off my nose and looked in the mirror. Dr. Ashraf was smiling and repeating the word swollen. I was barely registering that though and when I saw myself in the mirror it was quite a shock. I looked like a cartoon character because my face had no depth. My face was very swollen on either side of my nose so I looked like a character straight out of Bobs Burgers. Couple that with the psychological thunderstorm of suddenly having a different face and it all made for pretty fun times.

Thankfully though, I made it through the whole process and had a shiny new nose for all my troubles. Although my nose had been severely crooked for most of my life, it was now straight. A side effect that I was expecting, but was not as important as restoring its ability to inhale and exhale air at a relatively lively rate. And after taking off all the bandages and finally being able to breathe through both nostrils properly, I can tell you it was one of the best feelings I had ever had.

It was not nearly as good however, as that first night of REM sleep. Something I had not realized, or had forgotten, was that a side effect of my sleep apnea was a severe and constant lack of dreams. Every night was silent and every morning was anxious. The day I woke up feeling more rested than I can remember and with the first dream in years still fresh on my mind, is probably going to be in my top 10 days ever for the rest of my life. Right now it’s in my top 5 for sure, but I’m accounting for a whole lifetime here so I had to be realistic.

Anyway, that’s enough from me today. Time to watch Arsenal hopefully mutilate Man UTD (no jinx intended). Tomorrow is Sunday, which is still a weekend where I currently am. Still unsure if I will be blogging tomorrow. So I guess I’ll sign off like this:

More on that tomorrow?

Good Night’s Sleep

hhhrnph. Groggy. Very groggy. Where was I? Idiot Doctor that’s right. Let’s call him Idiot#1 (there are more idiots to come). After realizing that the surgeon who operated on me at 12 years of age had basically become a soul-less money guzzling super demon, I had to find someone else. And in that effort  I suppose the super-demon (I thought he was Idiot#1?) helped me establish a new focus. I decided that I would not choose my doctor based on anything other than my personal reading of him. Not what he tells me, not what sounds better, but what I honestly thought of him during our meetings.

In order to do that I would have to have a very high level of social and emotional awareness, or in easier terms, I would have to be really good at reading people. Thankfully this was a skill I had already acquired. Being a chubby geeky gamer and classic introvert I spent the majority of my life on the edge of rooms looking in. That meant that I have probably spent more time observing humans than interacting with them. I’m not entirely sure if that is a statement that is at all unique, this must be true for most people after a certain period of time. But I mean that growing up, I was the quiet thinker in the corner of the room, who occasionally became the class clown, usually during Arabic class.

In any case, you will just have to trust that I am a good judge of other people’s emotions and have a high level of social awareness. Except with my family, for some reason with loved ones your methods of deduction tend to go a little haywire and are replaced with confusion. This tends to become a fixable problem as you often re-calibrate and achieve proper social interaction after a brief period of overload. But this is about the doctor. The second doctor I visited was exceptionally younger than Idiot#1 (I now prefer super-demon :/) this gave me hope, because I knew that a younger doctor meant that he was more up to date with the latest medical practices. What I overlooked was that this guy was taught by the super demon himself. This doctor looked at my scans and told me that my septum was indeed deviated severely, and that my interior turbinates were too large. He argued that the turbinates were the real cause of my sleep apnea and breathing troubles (just like the super demon!). He said he didn’t recommend surgery on the septum because ‘it might damage the septum if it was operated on before’.

It wasn’t his argument that I called bullshit on (even though it was a classic Egyptian doctor tactic of suggesting possible danger to convince you of another course of action), it was the way he said it. Just like the super demon this man was not a great actor. When I asked him again why he only wanted to operate on the turbinates and not on the septum, he gave the reply above, but squinched (thats not a word) his face inwards and looked down and a little to the left. Averting his gaze. Brow furrowed because he knew he was being less than truthful. Not gonna fool me bro. In reality Idiot#2 wanted (you guessed it) MONEY!!! Surgery money!!! And what a beautiful thing money is, but he wasn’t getting mine.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was obviously lying, I also just didn’t like the odds he gave me. He said without operating on my septum he could restore my breathing to 60%.  What a pitiful number to throw at me. If he’s going to lie he should have at least bumped it up to 75% or 80%. It sounds better and I would never be able to argue malpractice over a presumably lost 20%. What a chump. That was that for Idiot#2. Unfortunately Doctor #3 ( I don’t want to call him and idiot because he’s the oldest one and he’s a nice man) was not much better, but he gave me breathing room. He argued that there was nothing wrong with the surgery performed on my septum, and that my problem was purely allergies. I begrudgingly decided to try his allergy medication, while simultaneously sending my scans to the good old USA to be examined, using a website called Second Opinions. Idiot#2 had already confirmed to me what Google had told me, that septum surgery at such a young age is wrong. The nose tends to keep growing and reverse itself back to being deviated. This was obviously what had happened to me over the last few years. When I told Doctor#3 this, he made the sort of sound you make when you’re not sure if you want a third(!) piece of cake. Something like a ‘eeh’.

But you see, I understood his predicament. He was old enough to have made that mistake hundreds of times before the medical community realized you shouldn’t operate on kids. He was probably so upset to learn that, he decided to refute it, to pretend as if those findings didn’t exist, or were at the very least debatable. I understood that kind of defense mechanism, I really did. But what worried me was the middle class family I saw waiting to go in after me. For them an error on their doctors part could cost them everything. They could spend all they have for something that doesn’t heal them at all. Most people in Egypt trust their doctor. If he wants to lead them away  from a certain procedure because  it doesn’t involve HIM doing the surgery, or making the money, he often succeeds. That was what was happening in my case, the Ear Nose Throat guys wanted to keep the business (ME) to themselves, instead of referring me to the proper surgeon for my condition.

When the scans came back from the USA they confirmed what I had been suspecting:

1: My nose was absolutely destroyed

2: It definitely was NOT allergies

3: I needed a plastic surgeon.

That’s right folks, I had to get a nose job. A Functional Rhinoplasty they call it. It was a procedure so complex that only a plastic surgeon could properly perform. I realized then that I was being duped. Definitely by the super-demon and Idiot#2. It was in their interest to operate on me, so they told me that’s what should happen. Instead of referring me to a plastic surgeon so I could get that 100% improvement.

In any case, long story short(?) I found a great plastic surgeon on a website called What Clinic (What an important website!). He had the highest ratings on the site and I trusted my gut. 5 stars is 5 stars. He gave me the same diagnosis as the folks in the USA without me telling him what they said. He was also very honest and clear with me, and once he passed those tests I knew he was the guy. His name is Dr. Ashraf AbolFotooh and you can see his clinic profile here:

Dr. Ashraf’s Clinic

That my friends, is the full story of how I successfully achieved my goal of finally having a good night’s sleep for the first time in years. But how did the surgery go? How did that process feel? How many people saw your penis under that flimsy hospital gown? How many nurses did you flirt with while drifting off under anesthesia?

More on that tomorrow.

Good Morning Internet

How’s it going? You all right? Glad to hear it. I’m fine by the way, thanks for asking. For those of you who do not know me, I am a 20 something Egyptian Male with a degree in Political Science from our very own American University in Cairo. Why political science you ask? At the time it was because I liked reading history and the one course I had taken in that subject offered plenty of that, so I thought why not just major in the damn thing, I’ve got nothing better to do. Fast forward 4 years and I’m still kicking myself that AUC had a FILM MAJOR  I knew nothing about. But in any case, there’s no point crying over spilt milk, although I do love me some milk so spilling it isn’t something I go around doing on the regular, that would be a tremendous waste that would surely get me a slap from the wife. Oh yeah, I’m also married. And yes, she is VERY abusive, it’s probably the reason I’ve started this blog, to try and seek help because there’s nowhere else for the pain to go. More on that later. But in all seriousness, the real reason I decided to start this daily blog is to get my god damn life on track. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a twitter-less hobo, I get shit done from time to time, it’s just the length of time between the first ‘time’ and the second ‘time’ that are an issue at the moment. Although trust me, it used to be much worse back in the old sleep apnea days.

Sleep apnea is terrible, if you have never had it, it basically feels like suffocating every night before you go to bed, sometimes for hours, before waking up having achieved little to no measurable rest whatsoever. Your brain never resets because you get negligible REM sleep and you continue a zombie-ish existence until you finally become so tired one day you sleep the biologically required 12(!) hours your body actually needs of sleep while breathing through one nostril. For over a year, maybe two (its tough to remember when things like this START), I persisted in this hellish existence, before finally thinking to myself, maybe there’s something not quite right. But I’m not one to rush into things, so I naturally took 6 months of self examination and assessment of my sleeping situation before I confirmed that there was indeed something quite wrong. The first dead giveaway is the super-breaths I found myself taking every night during my attempted sleep. Basically because my nose was incapable of filling up my lungs with a serviceable quantity of air, my mouth would have to step in, usually when I’m in Stage 1 of sleep (the one where it feels like you’re still awake), with a monstrous, alarming, yet ultimately life-saving gasp for air. This always had the helpful side-effect of pulling me right out of sleep and back to the realms of the very, very much awake. But it doesn’t stop there! If by some miracle, you actually succeed and fall asleep, the gasps just keep on coming, this time preventing you from reaching REM sleep during the night. I knew this was happening because I also had the charming side effect of finding myself falling asleep at strange times during the day (as well as being generally fatigued ALL the time). But the question was, how do I monitor this?

I had two options, one was to go to a sleep clinic. The second (and the one I chose) was to rely on a Smartphone app that supposedly measures your sleep and what stages of sleep you are in. Now I know what you are thinking, why not just go to a sleep clinic and have it properly tested, why rely on an app when you could have a definitive answer in one night. Well I’m glad you asked. The quick and simple answer is that the idea of going to a sleep clinic freaked me out to no end. I had developed over the years a distinct and measurable paranoia towards my fellow man (more on that later), and the thought of going to bed in a strange room where I would be monitored throughout the night was too creepy for my taste. Also I couldn’t escape the feeling that on that one night, my nose would for some reason decide to function properly, and I would be doomed to live a sleep apnea filled existence having been given a less than certain ‘all clear’ from Cairo Sleep Center. I realize the cynics among you must be thinking what a fool I am, rest assured I am with you on this one. I learned from a young age that my foolishness is not in my control, I was born with it, I live with it and I will die with it, so I have learnt to accept it. The App (Sleep Cycle on IOS) told me the following consistently in a 2 week period: For the first 7 hours of my sleep I would be in stages 1-4, and I would reach REM sleep at the 7th hour. This made immeasurable sense to me, because I had attempted to sleep 8 hours and overslept several times over the past year, so much so that it became something of a traumatic experience for me, waking up to find myself already late for whatever it was I was supposed to be doing, or whomever it was I was supposed to be meeting. So while the app was not a doctor, or a sleep center or an omniscient being from the 7th(!) dimension, it made sense. Alot of sense. Enough sense for me to embark on my next course of action.

More on that tomorrow!