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Sleep relief incoming
Yesterday's appointment went great. My doctor agrees that I sound like a classic case of sleep apnea, and has set things in motion.
There aren't many places that do good-quality sleep studies and will work with Medicaid, but there is at least one in Seattle, at the Harbor View medical center. It happens that Dave (the doc) works in the emergency room there as well as his private practice at Capitol Hill Medical, and he picked up the phone and made initial contact on my behalf. I should be hearing from their sleep medicine people sometime soon to see about scheduling.
But it's likely to take a while for that, because of much greater need than supply. So in the meantime he's prescribed a very mild anti-depressant. I forget the name of it, but will fill that in later. *blush* He says that in the dosages he prescribes, it doesn't have any actual anti-depressant value, but does help with sleep. He prefers to prescribe only what he's taken himself, and he said that this is what he takes when, for instance, he finishes an ER shift at 11:30 pm and has to be ready for office patients at 10 am the next day. I'll be picking that up today and getting started with it, and hope to have some good news of sleep relief soon.
I admit to some more moments of bitterness toward all those who've helped perpetuate this ghastly mess of a health care system instead of any of the decent, effective alternatives in use in the rest of the industrialized world, but I'm trying not to rant too much about it and would prefer not to fight that debate again in these comments. It's not really a thing I'm open to discussion about.
There aren't many places that do good-quality sleep studies and will work with Medicaid, but there is at least one in Seattle, at the Harbor View medical center. It happens that Dave (the doc) works in the emergency room there as well as his private practice at Capitol Hill Medical, and he picked up the phone and made initial contact on my behalf. I should be hearing from their sleep medicine people sometime soon to see about scheduling.
But it's likely to take a while for that, because of much greater need than supply. So in the meantime he's prescribed a very mild anti-depressant. I forget the name of it, but will fill that in later. *blush* He says that in the dosages he prescribes, it doesn't have any actual anti-depressant value, but does help with sleep. He prefers to prescribe only what he's taken himself, and he said that this is what he takes when, for instance, he finishes an ER shift at 11:30 pm and has to be ready for office patients at 10 am the next day. I'll be picking that up today and getting started with it, and hope to have some good news of sleep relief soon.
I admit to some more moments of bitterness toward all those who've helped perpetuate this ghastly mess of a health care system instead of any of the decent, effective alternatives in use in the rest of the industrialized world, but I'm trying not to rant too much about it and would prefer not to fight that debate again in these comments. It's not really a thing I'm open to discussion about.