You see, in my old age, sleeping has become a well orchestrated battle, going back, believe it or not to when I was three years old and got scarlet fever. Well that last piece anyway, is according to my mother, and a doctor I recall seeing when I was around 13.
I went to that doctor because I had a persisting blockage of my right sinus which left me in serious pain. He shoved some sort of gunk up my nose into my sinus which about sent me through the ceiling, but thankfully shortly thereafter, completely drained my sinus.
It seems my nasal passage, due to a twice-broken nose from playing sandlot baseball, was so narrow as to be almost closed. So whenever I came down with any virus related sickness, I was at risk for having that sinus cavity get infected due to a lack of proper drainage and air circulation. And oh, by-the-way my twice broken nose then grew to be substantially bigger than it would have ordinarily been according to that doctor. For you see in those days, when you broke your nose they didn't do anything to fix it. They just left it set and heal by itself. I know I've probably already told you more about my nose than you wanted to hear. However it's a critical piece of background for my seventy-five-year-old sleeping issue.
So back to bed. I like, or more truthfully am hard-wired to believe I like, to sleep with the windows open in cool or cold weather. Last night as the outside temperature tumbled into the teens, the lunacy of that hard wiring was obvious, even to an old curmudgeon like me.
Remember the electric blanket setting I mentioned earlier? Well last night a 4 setting wasn't enough. I had to go up to 7 on a scale of 10. And this while wearing a long shirt, long stretch yoga pants, great multi-colored striped socks, and a cotton beany! I looked like something out of an old scrooge cartoon. Lest you think I'm being a bit dramatic, I'm attaching a picture of my sleeping attire, taken this morning before I undressed to get dressed. Somehow getting-undressed-to-get-dressed seems like a silly routine, doesn't it?
The reason for the gloves, you see, is that I've discovered that my old-age-thinning-skin seems ever-so-much-more effected by touching cold surfaces at 4 AM.. And so I rolled over, after upping the electric blanket setting, and pulled a pair of cotton gloves out from underneath the pillow where I store them, and put them on. This wee hour maintenance was necessary because the back of my hands feel like they are burning whenever they touch the (freezing!) cold sheets that were supposed to be protecting me. Has my hard-wiring lunacy yet become apparent?
To understand some of the issue with my sleeping we need to digress to a bit of physics here. You see, over time I have engineered a whole system of sleeping between two sheets in a cold room. It begins with 1000 thread high sheen cotton sheets, which are both thicker and smoother, so that they provide a bit more insulation along with more slipperiness so they don't trap me when I roll from side-to-side during the night.
Along with the sheets, my winter garb is all in high-tec, slippery, stretch sorts of fabrics, smooth so-as-to foster rolling over without becoming tangled up in my sheets. I've discovered by experience over the years that normal cotton fabric nightwear doesn't work that way. It tends to scrape and tangle with cotton sheets. There are however two exceptions to my high-tec fabric rule: my beany (remember, I am bald and we lose 7 to 10% of our body heat through our heads y'all) and my gloves which are cotton. I have tried winter golf gloves and a stretch beany in the past, but they were either too sticky or didn't provide sufficient insulation.
Just one more piece of information about the bedroom scene. In the winter with the window open and the dry air, I must sleep with a humidifier, or eventually, begin to suffer nose bleeds from the dryness. This also necessitates using ear plus to drown out the humidifier sounds along with the invariable house wren that is fond of sitting outside of my bedroom window to so thoroughly announce the beginning of the day around 6 AM each morning
Still with me? Ok. So now you have all the background you need for me to finish the story of my nightly sleeping ordeal.
So here I am laying on my left side with my left hand holding my sinus open by pushing my right cheek away from my nose. Got that picture? Now my right arm starts to seek a position where it can rest without aggravating the pain that nightly emanates out of my right shoulder socket - this according to my friendly Duke doctor, being due the arthritis that has so happily taken root in the socket of my shoulder. So each time I start out lying on my left side, my right arm automatically goes into a-pain-free-comfortable-position-search-mode until after trying all options, it settles on one that if not pain-free, is at least less painful.
Lest you think, I am now happily off into slumber land, no such luck. You see, I can't stay in my left-side-beginning-this-sleep-cycle-position for a long time because - now just imagine yourself in this position - my left hand eventually goes to sleep! This of course, because it's being held in an elevated position to push on my right cheek. And eventually when my left hand invariably starts to tingle, I wake enough to execute one of those rollovers I've been talking about that require slippery sheets and nightwear, to end up lying on my right side with my right cheek being pulled back toward my right ear as it frictions against the pillow, so I can continue to breath out of my right nostril. And of course, if you think about it, I am now lying on my right arthritic shoulder, which immediately lets me know it is not happy about my position.
Throughout my tale of woe, you may be wondering, "well what about breathing through the left side of your nose?" And of course I do. However it's not apparent to me. It's become a psychological phobia, whenever I cannot breath through the right side of my nose. It's for sure I wouldn't make a good spy or anything where I might get captured and water-boarded. Because if that happened to me I'd give it all up before the first drop of water hit the fabric. In fact I'd start confessing just by having the towel (or whatever water-boarders use) put over my face. Do you think that qualifies as a phobia?
"Well Brian", you might ask, "why don't you just sleep on your back?" I'm not sure how much time you have, because that's another whole deal about snoring, and sleep apnea when I sleep on my back, and having to lose weight so as to deal with those issues, and not being able to hold my sinus cavity open when lying on my back, etc. All this by-the-way after finally having an operation to open my nasal passage about seven years back, which while providing a dramatic difference, didn't do enough to make breathing easy and natural.
So last night as I laid on my right side with my left hand massaging my right shoulder (it seems to help dissipate the pain) in an early morning stupor, it came to me. I need to share my nightly ordeal to see if it's just me, or if just maybe, there are other sufferers out there with whom I can commiserate.
I sincerely hope the rest of you have an easier time of it at night. And tonight as it's forecast to drop to around 10, I'm leaving the window closed.
Oh in case you're wondering, our orchids are growing just to the left of where I'm standing when I took my scrooge picture.
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