Sleeping for well over 8 hours helped, but in the evening the jaws flare up again. There is probably some spot where the infection stays and then it comes out when given a chance. Perhaps the root of another tooth: One of them is kind of sensitive to pressure, so that may be one candidate. Or it could be the sinus right above the roots, drawing a steady supply of bacteria from the nose cavities. A couple decades ago I would have been eager to take penicillin to get rid of it, but these days that is not certain to help, and every visit to the doctor’s is a new opportunity to pick up bacteria that are resistant to nearly everything. The antibiotics that still help are almost as dangerous as the bacteria themselves.

For the last couple weeks at least, I have had pain in my upper jaw / lower sinuses off and on, perhaps especially if I did not get enough sleep. However, last night I slept for about 8 hours (one hour in my chair and seven in bed, or nearly so) and tonight after I came home from work, my upper jaw quickly filled with pressure and some pain. It has spread a bit across the face, first on the right side but later on the left too. On the right side, I can feel a sore lump on the inside of my cheek. Generally my face feels sore and stiff. Also my neck is a little stiff, but not much. Does not sound like a common cause of death, but I am still chronicling it in case it somehow turns out to be useful to know in the future.

I slept a full night in my bed last night, but tonight I have a tight chest and occasional deep cough. Should probably sleep in the master bathroom so as to not keep the Muslims upstairs awake all night. Cranky Muslims is not something I – or the neighborhood as a whole – needs more of.

I am a bit nervous about sleeping when I am not breathing easily. I have done what I could – used the asthma inhaler and taken cough drops – so I guess it is time to give it a try.

***

Morning. Well, that was an interesting night. I slept in one-hour spurts, although the first two were mostly spent in brainwave entrainment. I am tired and still have a chest cold, but I am alive for now, so that is a good thing as far as I am concerned.

The last two nights I have been back in the bedroom, using my timer to wake up first after 3 hours, then 2, then 2 again. The first night I woke up by myself before the timer, the next I woke by the timer. I believe I have slept for about 7 hours in total each night. I was a little more tired than usual in the morning, but not at work. I have not had any other problems with it until this afternoon at work, when my right eye became a little irritated.  I keep blinking but it remains irritated. Further down, in the top of my mouth, above the gums but to the side of the palate, there is a bulge which is also tender and will probably (judging from past experience) develop cold sores. The right side of my face between these two points is generally tender and hurts a little. My take on this is that my immune system is not working perfectly – the right side of my face tends to be the “canary in the mine” for such cases. A sinus may be involved, especially since the sinuses are probably where the chewy goo in my throat and bronchi comes from in the first place.

Slept in the master bathroom all night, using a timer and 2-Hz delta brainwave entrainment.

Fleeing the bedroom does not stop my respiratory tract running full of a mixture of soft gel and chewy bits. I believe the goo comes from my sinuses and the back of my nose, and slowly slide down the back of my throat. When I am awake, I swallow it either as it arrives or occasionally clearing my throat. When I sleep, it gradually accumulates, but it is rare that there is so much of it that I wake up feeling short of breath. It is probably not an allergy. So staying in the bathroom does not help in that regard, but it makes sure I don’t wake up the Muslims, thus reducing my chance to get stabbed to death.

In fact, I woke this morning from a nightmare of the Muslims trying to break into the room where I was sleeping. I guess I am now a certified Islamophobe.

The mattress is truly unpleasant, although it is better than nothing. I am baffled that I slept on that mattress, on the floor, every night for 4 years until I moved to Riverview and got my current bed. Thinking back, I realize that I did nap a lot more at work then than I do now. Usually, I don’t do that now, but today I was pretty close.

When I first went to bed, I went through en entire 40 minute brainwave entrainment without falling asleep. That’s OK, brainwave entrainment is most effective when your mind is quiet but you are still awake. Dreams tend to disturb it, as they are full of the primal emotions that interfere with entrainment:  Fear, anger, lust and disgust. Stuff like that. These things interrupt the spread of the slow, regular waves of the entrainment from just above the brain stem out through the neocortex.

I fell asleep during the next round, and woke up from the timer, then quickly fell asleep again. Observation: Waking up is not enough, I need to be awake long enough to clear out some of the gel and chewy bits, otherwise I might just as well double the length of the timer. It is not waking up that helps, it is the clearing. Later in the night, this became obvious, and I got up for a while, coughed and hacked, chewed a peppermint gum and sprayed a mild saltwater solution in my nostrils which were by now also congested. The effect was remarkable, and I returned to bed for a final 2-hour session, which came to an end when I had the Islamophobic nightmare.

In conclusion, I could use a better mattress or a way to wake up without waking up the neighbors.

Alternatively I could try to sleep more during the evening, before the neighbors upstairs go to bed in the first place.  Won’t happen today though, because acid reflux keeps me from sleeping until many hours after a meal, and I already ate. I’ll see if I can do a couple sessions of brainwave entrainment though.

Well, it worked, kind of. I set my timer to 2 hours and went to bed around midnight, or that is what I firmly believe. Still, it was well past 3 when I woke from its chime. Either I misremember badly, or the thing tried to wake me for an hour. That is not impossible, for there was more goo in my bronchi than I expected. Unfortunately my bedroom is right below the bedroom of the Muslims, so if they sleep as lightly as I would have done if I grew up in a war zone, they probably woke up an hour before I did from the chime. I dragged my old, cheap guest mattress to the master bedroom (once I had coughed up enough goop) and went to sleep there. I like to think I was just kind and my decision has nothing to do with the reputation of Muslims as eager to stab people over and over and over if they don’t like them.

Anyway, the move turned out to be a good idea. The mattress is rather on the thin side, or perhaps it is its old age, but it is kind of hard. As in, you can kind of feel the floor through it, but it is still much better than nothing. It took me a while to fall asleep the first time (I considered brainwave entrainment but decided against it) but after that I slept repeatedly in 2-hour intervals. Whether it was because of shallower sleep or shorter sleep or some allergen in the bedroom, I was much less bothered by goo this time. So that was a success. I could even go to work in the morning at normal time, and did not fall asleep at work.

I should probably do a couple sessions of brainwave entrainment through the evening and try the 2-hour sleep policy again tonight. Given that I consider survival a success, I rather wish to continue succeeding. I am still occasionally coughing up some chewy toy, so I think it is a bit early to go back to normal.

I woke up after a couple hours of sleep because my throat felt full of thick goo. I got up and spent about half an hour clearing my throat and swallowing. Then back to bed. After two more hours of sleep, I woke up because it was hard to breathe. (I actually dreamed that I was walking uphill and had to take a pause.) I got up and it was still hard to breathe. It did not feel like an asthma attack (they have a special feeling to them and make a wheezing, fluting sound when I breathe out. Besides, I have them after vigorous exercise. This dream did not qualify.) It felt more like my lungs were half full with goo, presumably the same goo that was in my nose and throat. I did use my asthma inhaler just in case it might help, but I can’t say it did.

However, just staying up and breathing through my nose seems to help. Half-thick clear mucus keeps coming up; I mostly just swallow it. I am not sure why goo is accumulating in my lungs when I sleep. I suspect it is because I breathe through my mouth (my nose is not completely clogged but partly, and my throat is super dry whenever I wake up this past week so clearly I have been breathing through my mouth).

My digestion has gone crazy too this morning, not sure whether this is connected though. My stomach just hurts a little, intestines are hyperactive. Well, I was not eager to go to work anyway.  I can forget that commute now, so that was convenient. (Also, it is snowing pretty densely, which means there is a fairly high risk of foreign truck drivers getting stuck on the slopes and blocking the traffic for hours. And in-province buses don’t have toilets, so.)

Anyway, I seem to be able to breathe as long as I don’t sleep. This is not a permanent solution.  I did a 40-minute delta brainwave entrainment this morning. Fell asleep about halfway through. Not long enough to drown, not nearly, but my lungs did at least not feel better afterwards. I was less desperately sleepy though, so I will try to do this repeatedly through the day and see what happens. Unless things continue to develop, one way or another. I am getting a bit queasy as I write, so it seems likely that something is going to change.

Edit to add: 12 hours later, I feel much better. I had two more 40 minute delta brainwave entrainment, which helped considerably on my tiredness and possibly general health. But I probably need several more throughout the evening if I don’t want to risk my life by sleeping a full night.  Well, that sounds overly dramatic, but then it does feel overly dramatic to wake up and only be able to breathe halfway. And that was with only a few hours sleep.

EDIT 2:  It is soon midnight again. I have taken nose drops that should keep me able to breathe through the nose for a few hours, if that is the trigger. I have set a 2-hour timer on my smartphone, hoping to wake up then and evaluate my lung status. But I am still nervous. Well, more like shaky.

Not a resounding success. The first night, I managed to stay awake for the 40 minutes of my 1-Hz delta entrainment by holding an empty yogurt box in my hand, so that it would fall on the floor if I fell asleep. I then went to bed, but slept for something like 6 hours, waking up briefly now and then but not enough to get out of bed. Throat still dry. Over the course of the day, got infection in upper-right jaw again, as often happens if I skimp on sleep.

The next night, I fell asleep while still holding my yogurt box. Once again I slept superficially for the rest of the night. I am not particularly tired at work, the only reason I need more deep sleep is to keep the gum/jaw infections away.  This one is still blooming, although it seems confined to the upper right side for now.

This past night I woke up after about 3 hours because my throat was super dry after breathing through my mouth. My nose is still partly congested after a cold long ago, and it gets worse when I sleep. I wake up much more stuffy than I lie down, although not enough that I would suspect an allergy. No running eyes or nose, no itching.

Anyway, probably related to this, I got a chest cold, or at least bronchial cough this evening. I guess it is time to experiment more with brainwave entrainment and see how well it can substitute for sleep. Not perfectly, I know that, but I can’t sleep perfectly anyway with a chest cold.