Slice of Chaotic Life

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.