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9:04pm January 24, 2013

More update

Been waking up white as a sheet. Took my oxygen last time it happened, before I started breathing normally – 75. And that was in the bipap while waking from being asleep. DPA called pulmonologist, pulmonologist is setting me up for an emergency bipap titration study or something. I don’t quite get what is happening because everyone else is handling it. But badly controlled sleep apnea might explain why this aspiration/infection/etc. seems worse than it ought to given the antibiotics seem to be working. I hope it’s not central apnea going out of control, because that can turn really hard to treat.

My phlegm is as good a color as it can be, but I feel really lousy and my oxygen isn’t great while awake either – 88-93 usually unless I use the bipap. Not emergency bad but not good. I get really tired, which isn’t good because then I sleep and my oxygen must be terrible when sleeping which makes me even more tired.

I can’t tell anymore if I’m getting better or worse – seems an odd combination of both. Still trouble reading anything harder than Peanuts. But this lack of oxygen while sleeping, presuming my measurement applies in general, could explain a lot of my cognitive problems lingering.

I don’t think I’m holding back any information, at least not purposely. I feel guilty though because I can tell from responses I get that people worry. But then maybe better for people who care about me to worry than to get mad at me for depriving them of important information. I don’t know. I feel really tired. Not like I did before I went in the hospital. But still – too tired. Not good. I am so glad I have a pulmonologist who recognizes an emergency when she sees one. And people around me able to act on my behalf when I’m too sick to do all that managing.

Things don’t seem to be going as well as the outward signs show they should. Either that or I’m just experiencing how lousy aspiration can be even when the antibiotics work. But something seems off or wrong in some way. I hope everything works out.