Straight from Michael Jackson trial

I never really thought I'd blog about Michael Jackson. I was about 10 when he was at the height of popularity and i didn't really like his music. I wasn't allowed a lot of musical variety and filtered through my experience he was just loud and showy. Even now I prefer soft music, lots of acoustics (another post coming soon in fact), and the like. But CNN had an article today that I found fascinating. It was based on the testimony of a sleep expert who said that with 60 days of "sleep" induced by propofol Michael had gone longer than any known person without REM sleep and he would probably have died from that within days. REM sleep isn't an option and anesthesia doesn't create it. Which is probably good. I'm pretty sure I had propofol during my hysterectomy and when they woke me in the OR and gave the first dose of morphine my body decided that the morphine was anesthesia. I was awake enough to know something was wrong and not awake enough to know that the surgery was done. Everything seemed to be the same as when I remembered and I didn't know time had passed. The surgeon was beside me holding my hand and I was looking to the right at first. Then there was all this bustling and I was repositioned, an oxygen mask was placed on my face and they used the ambu-bag to get oxygen in and then i think reversed the morphine and restarted at a lower dose. I knew only that there was bustle about breathing and thought it was part of going under until my mom told me what the surgeon explained to her. After that I just resented the oxygen I was on for 2 days. But my point is that it wasn't sleep. When I sleep there is a clear difference between sleep and awake. With propofol there was just aware and thinking or nothingness. So I know that he didn't get real sleep. What fascinated me though was the the descritpion of not getting REM sleep:

Depriving someone of REM sleep for a long period of time makes them paranoid, anxiety-filled, depressed, unable to learn, distracted and sloppy, Czeisler testified. They lose their balance and appetite while their physical reflexes get 10 times slower and their emotional responses 10 times stronger, he said.

describes me so well. Which is interesting because I only get 10-20% (I forget the exact number) of the REM sleep I should. Antipsychotics do this and are partly to blame but the dr. said after my sleep study that it is brain chemistry even without the antipyschotics. I was most interested in the reflexes as mine test slow. I kept telling the ER doctors that when I had the lithium toxicity and that makes your reflexes more active which was an early clue that something was off that it took 3 doctors doing it for me to realize the truth. I wasn't very observant that day; I kept doing neuro tests that I had done with patients many times and not realizing I was failing. When I figured it out I knew I was very toxic but by that point I also knew that I was about to be hooked up to a lot of fluids which was a give-away. Anyway, I learned something from Michael Jackson's death. Since I've toppled over at least 5 times in the last week it's good to know there's a reason. Today I painted my basement. I only did 50% of it because the rest is in good shape. It took 2 gallons of Kilz and I am still covered in paint that I couldn't wash off. Tomorrow we paint the porch floor and then painting is done. Praise God. I like to paint but we have done entirely too much of it lately. Next is just cleaning tomorrow and Sunday, Monday I will empty the fridge and freezer and take out the enormouse amount of trash generated each week, Tuesday the carpets are cleaned and hopefully I'll be able to mow and Wednesday I hope to have off unless I have to mow. Thursday I sign off and list the house. And that's enough for now. Copyright 2006 www.masterofirony.blogspot.com