I Just Wanted an Appointment

I have never liked going to the doctor and over the years it has gotten worse.  I get so anxious that when I finally get in the doctor’s office, my mind goes blank and my response to questions is either “Things are okay” or “I am fine”.  I am great at delaying and putting things off.  But I finally found a primary care doctor that I really like and trust so I decided to quit procrastinating and seek medical treatment for a condition that bothers me.  I had an appointment with him yesterday and he took a lot of extra time to discuss things with me.  My doctor wants me to get an ultrasound done, then go see two specialists, and then we will discuss the next step.

So, today I was determined!  My motto was “Get it done!”  I picked up the phone to call and schedule the diagnostic study.  I paused the TV and called the phone number on the referral.  A polite man answers the phone and gets all my information: full name, birthdate, complete address, phone number and insurance carrier.  Then he tells me they don’t schedule that particular procedure and he would have to transfer me.  I got his name and the number he was transferring me to “just in case… ”, and shortly thereafter I was speaking to polite woman.  We go through the whole routine again (name, birthdate, etc.) and once more I am informed that I have the wrong number, they don’t schedule that study, and I will have to be transferred.  This process happened again and again.  Sometimes I was able to get the person’s name.  Sometimes I was able to get the number they were transferring me to.  Some of the people I spoke with were great – polite and very helpful.  But some of them were rude and not the least bit obliging.  Usually, the transfer went just fine but several times I was disconnected from the system.

After thirty minutes and two rude people in a row, I started to get upset (one person insisted I was not in the system and the other said she couldn’t schedule the ultrasound without the order number even though I told her I had it on my copy and I could read it to her).  I was transferred one more time and the woman who I spoke with was polite and helpful but she would have to transfer me again!  “Just in case” I got the phone number and it was the same one I started with!  I lost it.  My hands started shaking and my voice got all quivery, and I told her I was really upset.  I told her that I had already called that number and they just transferred me.  I told her that all I wanted to do was get the diagnostic study scheduled.

She apologized profusely but had to put me on hold.  When she got back on the phone she told me that even though she didn’t handle the scheduling of the requested procedure, she would take care of it.  Once again I give all my information and, ta-da, I am scheduled for next week!  Now that was a great example of good customer service.  When I finally hung up the DVR on my TV said 40 minutes and 39 seconds had passed!  No wonder dealing with the medical community causes anxiety!

Agrypnia

Insomnia – lying there at night, when it is dark and quiet but you just can’t get to sleep.  You glance at the clock and notice the hours as they slip by without being able to get to sleep.  Trying to shut off your mind, but the thoughts just keep coursing through your brain.  Getting up in the morning, tired and just wishing that you could get some sleep…  I like the word “agrypnia” better than “insomnia”; “chasing sleep” seems so much more appropriate than “sleeplessness”.

I have had lifelong agrypnia.  My first memory of agrypnia was when I was a preschooler.  I remember being glad when I learned to tell time in first grade specifically because of my agrypnia.  We had a mantle clock that chimed the hours and half hours, and somehow, it was comforting to know what time it was.  My agrypnia only got worse as I grew older, instead of being awake for hours at night, I began to be awake for the entire night.

I finally started doing some research about how to prevent insomnia in the 1980’s.  I followed all the recommendations: establish a routine, and go to bed and get up at the same time every day; don’t take naps; eat before you go to sleep (but don’t have a heavy meal); exercise before bedtime (but don’t exercise too much); avoid stimulants, such as nicotine and caffeine; avoid alcohol (wait, is that a depressant or a stimulant – oh, no, it is both!); only use your bed for sleep or sex – no TV, no reading of books (wait… read books but not anything stimulating); and most importantly – avoid stress and don’t worry!  Right…

For years, I followed this advice.  Do you know how hard it is not to take a nap if you haven’t slept much the night before?  And to this day, I don’t drink caffeine after my morning coffee; in fact, I avoid any soft drinks with caffeine.  After a while, it really annoyed me when I realized that it was all “Do this”, “Don’t do that”!  Experts were saying that it was my fault that I couldn’t sleep – my thoughts, my actions, my choices were preventing me from sleeping!

After years of trying to follow all the advice, I began to think “How dare you?  What makes you the expert?  Unless you have insomnia yourself, you have no reason to say anything!”  I even read an article that said insomnia was a learned behavior, and when I couldn’t sleep I was supposed to get up and do something I really hated, like washing the kitchen floor.  This was supposed to condition me to decide to sleep because the consequences were unpleasant.  Like being so tired but lying as hour after hour passed wasn’t unpleasant enough!  Like struggling though a day at work wasn’t difficult enough!

I decided that if the “expert” hadn’t lain awake for hours and hours at night, wondering why sleep was so elusive, I wouldn’t listen to them!!!  If the “expert” hadn’t personally experienced their own agrypnia, and not just an occasional sleepless night, then their advice was practically meaningless.  Trying to sleep is difficult enough without wondering what I have done to cause my sleeplessness.  That doesn’t turn off my brain at all.

Sigh…. I am really tired but I can’t go to sleep tonight.  Again!

You know what is the worst?  I googled insomnia remedies again this evening, and they haven't changed since the 1980's!  The same useless advice.  Oh, well.

Phantom Music

I haven’t written a blog here in a while for several personal reasons but it is time to shake off the shackles and write again so here goes…

Musical Ear Syndrome!  Or as I like to call it, phantom music.  Musical Ear Syndrome is a form of non-psychiatric auditory hallucination, also called Musical Hallucination or Musical Tinnitus.  Most people have heard of tinnitus, or ringing in the ears.  It is a perception of sound when none exists.  Musical tinnitus (or Musical Ear Syndrome) is when that sound is perceived as music.  Usually, victims hear musical noises ranging from vocals to instrumental music, and some even hear announcers or commercials.

Most people don’t talk about it because they are afraid of being accused of being mentally unstable or psychotic.  This might be a good time to talk about psychiatric auditory hallucinations.  Psychiatric auditory hallucinations are generally defined as voices talking to the victim (on a personal level), usually associated with schizophrenia or mania.  There can also be medical reasons for some auditory hallucinations, such as brain lesions or medication side effects.  Musical Ear Syndrome (or MES) does not fall into these categories.

As I mentioned above, most people don’t talk about it because they don’t want to be considered crazy.  But MES is becoming increasing recognized as separate from other auditory hallucinations making it easier for people to discuss it.  Experts believe that MES is related to hearing problems, and usually (but not always), is experienced by those with hearing loss.

I started googling this subject because I have experienced this phenomena myself.  Let me start by stating that I have a HUGE problem with insomnia.  Every few weeks, I have extreme difficulty getting more than a couple of hours of sleep several nights in a row.  I become an extremely light sleeper, and can be awakened by the slightest sound.  I have been awakened by the sound of the refrigerator coming on in the middle of the night, in the kitchen when I am in the bedroom, on a different floor!  In order to combat this, I turn on a fan in the room to help mask normal nighttime sounds.

Then, occasionally, I would be awakened by music.  I would assume it was my clock radio coming on - I would reach for the alarm clock and notice that it was hours before I needed to get up!  So where was the music coming from?  I would try and hunt the phantom music down but it was faint and difficult to trace.  The music was not coming from my clock radio, it wasn’t the neighbor, nor was it anything I could find to turn off!  The phantom music would last for a period of time lasting from about thirty minutes to a couple of hours.  I would get so frustrated!

I finally complained to my sweetie, and she googled it and told me about MES.  After researching it myself, I realized that my phantom music was triggered was my fan!  The item I used to mask noise was causing the phantom music that woke me up and kept me up!  It was such a relief to know that there was this thing called Musical Ear Syndrome, and I wasn’t the only person to experience it.

Now, when MES wakes me up in the middle of the night, I turn off the fan and am able to get back to sleep.  However, turning off the fan allows other noises to disturb me but for some reason, the sound of the refrigerator or furnace does not bother me nearly as much as the phantom music.

Papercuts Papercuts Papercuts

I know that I have made a couple of entries regarding papercuts.  The reason is that I know the artist, Elaine LaMarche, and we commissioned a piece of art.  Now, I am so excited!  I just have to give a shout out to Elaine LaMarche of E-Art Judaicuts - Noah's Arc won first place in an art show!  Woo hoo!  This beautiful piece of art deserves all of the accolades it has received.  Check out her stuff on her website and follow her on Facebook.

Noah's Arc



Night Owl

I have chronic insomnia.  I have had chronic insomnia for as long as I can remember, and it has always been difficult.  I seldom get a regular night's sleep.

I remember being glad to learn how to tell time in first grade.  We had this mantle clock that chimed the hours - at noon it chimed twelve times, at 1:00 it chimed once, at 2:00 it chimed twice, and so on.  When I was awake during the night, I knew what time it was by the chiming of the clock.  But I dreaded the time between 12:30am and 1:30am.  That was because the clock only chimed once for the half hours.  So if it chimed once, I wasn't sure what time it was.  It could be half past the hour or 1:00am.  And if it chimed once two times in a row, I still wasn't sure what time it was.  It could be 1:00am or 1:30am.  But if it chimed once three times in a row, I finally knew what time it was!  It was 1:30 in the morning!  And that was in the first grade!  Now, how many of you know 6 year olds that are awake for hours in the middle of the night?

Having insomnia has wrecked havoc with both school and work, but I have learned to get by with little sleep.  However, as I have gotten older, I sometimes I wonder if it is really insomnia or if I am just a Night Owl.  No matter how tired I am, if I remain awake until 10:00pm then I am remain awake for hours.  It is as if a switch is flipped at 10:00pm and, suddenly, I come alive.  If there is no social requirements for me to get up at a certain time, I naturally fall asleep around 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning and awaken sometime around 9:00 or 10:00 o'clock in the morning.

So, I decided that tonight's Google search should be the Night Owl.

First of all, Wikipedia is not very informative.  It just defines night owls as people  who stay up until late at night and morning larks as people who get up early.  Next, there were some businesses that had late night hours: bars and lounges and, for some reason, hookah places.  I was surprised by the next listing - sales of night vision goggles.  The first page on Google ended with several blogs ranging in topics from baseball cards to hair products.  Now, I don't know how any oft that is related to being a night owl, but the next few pages were even more baffling.  There were blogs about home decor, a Christian pastor, fishing lures and pediatric urgent care.  Not what I expected when I googled "night owl".

Video Game Muse???

Have you ever been inspired by someone?  Tried to emulate them and fail, miserably?  That happened recently.  I follow a blog in which the author recently spoke of her muses in the kitchen.  Based purely on memory, I thought a muse was an artist’s inspiration based on something Greek. Oh, and there were nine of them.

I looked it up and it turns out that there were nine Greek goddesses that inspired artists, writers and scientists.  So that inspired me to try and google gaming muses.  I thought I would eventually google something about video game inspirations but it was a total disaster!  First of all, google kept trying to correct it to “gaming mouse” instead of “gaming muse”.  When I finally got google to understand I wanted to search for “gaming muse”, I still didn’t get what I expected.  I got either foreign websites, stuff on tumblr, or something about Muse Software.  I kept going deeper into google to see if anything about video game inspiration showed up and when nothing of interest showed up, I switched to “video game muse”.  That didn’t turn up anything either.  <sigh> I am so disappointed.

So, do I write about my own muses in video gaming?  What inspired me to start gaming in the first place?  I don't know.  I am so disappointed but I might revisit this topic at a later time...

Ugly Wedding

The inspiration for today's post is something that showed up on my home page - a wedding video in which the bride and groom were made up as zombies.  Oh, it was sooooo ugly!  Most people want to look their best on such a momentous occasion.  I can understand bringing your own personality to a wedding but where you can't bear to look at your wedding pictures?  So, I wondered if it was very common that a couple wanted to be memorialized in that way.  So, let the googling begin!

I found several other zombie themed wedding pictures.  I can't imagine sharing these with your children or grandchildren!

Too much blood!

Too gruesome!

I saw quite a few other images of the bride and groom in a lot of makeup.  The most common seemed Shrek inspired weddings!  Shrek?  Green ogres?  Oh, well...



I wonder if this was a way of dealing with a cold outdoor wedding?

At least their makeup color matches.

Now, I really enjoy Star Wars, and so does my sweetie, so a Stars Wars themed wedding doesn't seem that outrageous.  But I can't imagine not being able to recognize the bride and groom!

General Akbar???

At least the bride got an ivory helmet to match her dress.

Updating Papercutting

I am excited to be sending out Christmas cards this year; we purchased some E-Art Christmas cards!  We have decided on the custom piece we want - a picture of Noah's Ark.  The artist is having another show this weekend: Temple B'nai Torah and the JT News are hosting a Hannukah Gift Fair on Sunday November 11th, from 9am-2pm. The Temple is located at 15727 NE 4th in Bellevue, Washington.  I asked her permission to post some of her papercuts here, but believe me, pictures don't do her artwork justice.

This one is my absolute favorite!  In real life, this piece is about two feet long.  The detail is phenominal!



Papercutting

I went to see the works of a local artist earlier today.  She does papercutting, and her artwork was beautiful!  So that was the inspiration for today's google search.

Papercutting is an extremely old art form consisting of, obviously, cutting designs into paper.  Its origins are generally attributed to China, where paper was invented.  The art form spread worldwide and was adopted by many different cultures.  Some papercutters use scissors on flat or folded paper, while other papercutters use a knife to cut a single sheet or multiple sheets of paper on a cutting mat. 

Each culture seemed to have put its own spin on the art of papercutting.  I was amazed to see so many different kinds of artwork, from traditional to modern art, from folk to fine art.  Papercutting pieces were also melded with other types of art forms, such as origami or painting.

The artist I saw today specializes in Judaica.  When she first told me about it, I had images of her sitting with a pair of scissors but she wields a knife as easily as she works with a paintbrush.  The design is traced on the paper and then, with the paper on a cutting mat, she cuts the paper with a knife.  Her designs run the gamut from simple to very complex.

I am so impressed that we will be ordering a custom piece!  Check out her work here on Facebook!  E-Art Judaicuts!

Inquiring Minds Want to Know

I want to do an introductory post before I start this new blog. Call me MJo.

I think getting started is difficult and awkward, so I will just plunge on in.  I have a couple of online blogs but they seem limited in scope - one is my Bodie Blog (posts about Bodie, my German Shepherd puppy) and another is my posts on Gamespot (a video game website).  But I want a forum to talk about what interests me.  So I decided to start a new blog that will allow me to talk about whatever has gotten my attention, whatever I end up googling about.

So, let the adventure begin...