Insomnia and other curses...

I'm the kind of person that's usually up when people are sleeping and asleep when people are up. Its not very convenient but I've always been a night person especially because I have insomnia. I've had it my entire life as well as sleep apnea. Basically it means, I have a hard time getting to sleep and if I do sleep I tend to stop breathing while I sleep. I have the CPAP machine, it blows air through a hose into a mask that covers my face. Its set at a specific pressure so that I can get air into my lungs while I sleep instead of suffocating. Feeling yourself jerk awake from asphyxiation is not fun. So with all this I just tend to stay up which leaves me having to find something to do. I usually read or watch TV. I also crochet and knit. Sometimes if I want to get up and do something I'll cook or bake. I'm trying to find new dishes and recipes for stuff so I can eat according to the way I need to eat. I had the gastric bypass surgery so I have a restrictive diet. Unfortunately the surgery was not a complete success because complications stemmed from the surgery which has left me with chronic pain. Many tests and procedures were run to determine what happened and still nothing has been determined what the problem is. It has had a major affect on the weight loss. My surgeon said, I've already lost the weight that I can lose by dieting and I've done a good job with that but in order to lose the rest I need to increase my exercise activity. Problem with that is, of course, my pain threshold. The pain is rather excruciating and that amount of exercise I already do, causes me to be in extreme pain. Its a vicious cycle. I had this surgery to help me lose the weight so that I would not need to have to use the CPAP machine, usually gastric bypass surgery "cures" sleep apnea. However, that has not been in case in my situation. You ever get the feeling you're cursed? I'm a Christian woman and I know that God does not intend for me to suffer but sometimes I think that I need a break. Then it hits me, there are far more people out there in the world that have it much worse than I do. Who am I to complain, right? I don't know but sometimes you have to throw yourself a little pity party just to acknowledge that you're going through stuff. If you ignore it, it doesn't go away it stays and festers. That's why I went to all the doctor's appoints and had test after test done. As a result of all this I ended up losing my job. So now I get to sit at home and stress about bills and money and worry about, if I find a job, how am I going to be able to handle working 8 hours a day in constant pain. The worst pain is when I'm sitting. Luckily being at home, once the pain becomes to difficult I can go to my room and lay down. Laying down helps because there's no pressure where the pain is. So being that I worked in office jobs, I'm sitting at a computer and on the phone most of the day. Therein lies the problem of, how do I work full time so I can make money to pay the bills without going stark raving crazy because of the chronic pain in which the doctor's have no idea of what's causing it? This is what not sleeping does. It causes all these pressures and anxieties and worry to continue to repeat itself in my head. And my parents wonder why am I always sleeping. Its because I don't want these worries and this pain so I'd rather sleep than have to deal with it. But than, here comes insomnia and sleep apnea, ruining the only time that I can be free of everything. Sleep to me is like crack or marijuana to a junkie. I want it at the most inopportune times. The beautiful thing about sleep though is that its free, its good for you and that's where I get a lot of my thoughts for my novels from, my dreams. I dream every single time and I tend to remember my dreams. I've always been a sleeping in kind of person. Even when I was a kid, I loved sleeping in. Though its been said that its not good for you to sleep in, ruins yours bodies clock or something like that. Poppycock is what I say! For me, I need the sleep as much as I can get whenever I can get it. The reason being, sleep apnea. Its a sleep killer. When I had my sleep study I was basically told that I had the most severe case of sleep apnea. Say if I was to get, on an average, 8 hours of sleep. Technically I would only be getting 4 hours. The rest of the time I'm waking myself up so that I can begin to breathe again. I was rated at waking up 500-600 times within 8 hours of sleeping. Most of those times I had no idea I was waking up, others I became conscious which causes me to have to try to get back to sleep. I rarely went into a REM cycle. So that's why I'm typing out another post because its late and I'm bored and haven't gone to sleep yet and am just waiting for the dough to set in the fridge before I can start baking another new recipe. It goes to show that Its The Little Things that makes sleeping a more desirable drug of choice. When in doubt sleep it out!