Sleep apnoea?

[WookieBoy]

There's a few around now.

King's College Hospital in London was the only one at the time.
Now Papworth Hospital in Cambridge is leading the way and setting up "breakout" clinics around the country from what I was told.
I think there's another hospital involved up north, maybe Bradford or Liverpool...

But mostly the centres are attached to "teaching" hospitals...

A google search should turn up some results. If not, I think there's a list on Papworth's RSCC Clinic website...

[WookieBoy]

Oh, and your GP can't now refuse to refer you due to changes in NHS structuring, if what I've just been told is correct...

So NAG NAG NAG them!

[Galvonaut]

It's great that there are more centres now! I needed one 10 years ago - now sleep is helped along with medication (not sleep meds, they are nasty).

Keith

[dnar]

Steve, same here.

I was fortunate enough to room with some nurses while at Uni.
It was one of them that spotted it and recommend that I get my GP to refer me to the (at the time) only sleep research centre in the U.K., which happened to be where she was working.

After fighting my Gp for almost a year (he was trying to give me loads of drugs, including some quite serious amphetamines! , but one of my other roommate was a toxicologist who told me what not to take!) I was finally referred.
3 months later I happily rejoined the human race... mostly anyways...

It's great that there are more centres now! I needed one 10 years ago - now sleep is helped along with medication (not sleep meds, they are nasty).

Keith

I am suspecting doctors are pushing the med route simply because of the kick backs from pharmacutical companies..... Therapists and machines dont fly you to Fiji each year.... Hang on, let me look in the mirror, yet I am turning into Mike Moore again, time to run away.

[Galvonaut]

I am suspecting doctors are pushing the med route simply because of the kick backs from pharmacutical companies..... Therapists and machines dont fly you to Fiji each year.... Hang on, let me look in the mirror, yet I am turning into Mike Moore again, time to run away.

I think GPs are banned from taking bribes in the UK now, although a far more insidious corruption of politics has taken it's place - more subtle and bigger money. I won't get into that one - suffice to say, many people's lifestyles now guarantee a level of ill health that keeps the drugs companies ticking over quite nicely.

I think the thing to remember with ill health is that in many cases, you have more power over symptoms than most think. I have chronic pain (post spinal surgery) and the neuralgia has been terrible, then I discovered, though unconventional methods, that the bigger problem was not the pain after all, it was my attitude towards the pain. I am still learning to accept the pain but it has made an amazing difference. One's attitude to symptoms can change everything, where opiates and other strong medications hardly touched the edges.

Keith

Keith

[The_Doctor]

I learnt that you have to treat sleep as if it were a bank, so that if you ever undersleep, you have to pay the debt back by catching up with the lost sleep.

I agree with that, and always try to average 7 hours or more if possible. I don't keep a long term count but I watch for signs of accumulating lack.

The government wants to police people's health. Now, while there's a good reason which they're twisting, they are more interested in paving the public's road to hell while they twist the power to favour their own rich kind. (I'm talking about the current UK political climate, other nations may differ). But suppose they manage to do this to us? Should we then force impeachment or immediate removal of leaders like Thatcher (whose sleep-deprived psychosis led eventually to a long and famous decline into severe dementia), for their own good, and to prevent their reckless pathological drives from damaging the rest of us too? I think so.

There have always been idiots who claim that sleep is wasteful, not the stuff of real men, of go-getting entrepreneurs, that if they could do without it, they could be 150% 'productive'. But what the fuck is the use of that if instead of 90 healthy years, they get only 60, psychotic, years? If those people want to tell us that the way we live is unacceptable, and must be punished, then it's time to take the castle by force. I for one do not like being told that the nation must works till it drops dead, these words being prated at us from maggots who can barely lift their heads from their banquets as they speak to the nation. 70% of the nation is calling for re-nationalisation of all services that we must use, which we cannot choose to avoid. No government has the spine to answer that call, yet. The govt has still got too many people scared of 'communism', running noses down in a rat race, looking for the cheaper deal where there is none, as if their work isn't demanding more than enough time already! The need to slow down, rest, be efficient, stop 'competing' where such effort is about as useful as fighting in a barrel, where 'co-operation' is debased into cartels of the rich, and made all but impossible for the rest of us, then it's time a whole lot more changed than a few medical practises. The only reason govt 'reforms' is because govt doesn't want to pay, but what the hell is an administration for? If they really don't want to be one they should step out of the way, but they don't, do they? They talk of less control while forcing more of it than ever. We won't get healthier unless we can get out from under that shitpile somehow. Most good things were born of long and careful building, but with such massive erosion of British public life we're heading to the state of Italy, and may find it hard to trade in the world, because the corruption will be too extreme for most to want to risk. There IS no place to share opinions like these now, so we might as well spout them where and when we feel like lit, as I do now. At least that way we might all get a sense of how we feel instead of suffering in silence. There are many places in the world far worse off, and we will still help those, but the way I see it is, if we do not also stop the local erosion, we may lose that capacity, and soon be calling on the EU for help, realising we no longer have the luxury of saying we don't need it. I'm sure there is trouble that way too, but at least it, and its answers, will be more likely shared. And the only way we'll get better clinics is to demand them of an administration whose elected duty it is to provide them. If that statement has no meaning for any person, it's time that person demanded of themselves what they think a government is for, and that if we can't do without them, as it seems we cannot, then we need to start forcing them to our will, instead of tolerating the bullshit we have now.

[Galvonaut]

Let them - I'm ignoring them now to a large extent.

With self-responsibility comes self-empowerment. Not quite there yet

[The_Doctor]

Well, I get worked up about it a lot of the time, totally ignore it another lot of the time. But if we 'get the government we deserve', we at least need to figure out what we're doing wrong. Right now we have a really bad one. Considerably worse than th previous one. They made mistakes. The current one is downright malicious. We need to fix that or a whole lot more people will get ill.

[dnar]

LOL my previous manager worked until 10:30 each night, and because of this always told staff he was efficient... I was like, "if you were really efficient you would be leaving work for the beach by 2pm."

[Galvonaut]

Maybe ignoring is the wrong word. Accepting is more like the case for me. I fought a lot of stuff, including the RAF for many years. I made myself more ill than I already was.

It seems to be the fighting that makes people ill a lot of the time.

If you fight anything, you can fail to understand it. By accepting it, you suddenly see the bigger picture, without the haze of emotion which creates distortion of the truth.

I imagine a lot of people are going to get ill. It is sad. Maybe the experience will be an enlightening one for a few - maybe even me.

I'm coming to realise that my perception of a thing changes based on my attitude towards it, meaning that whatever happens affects me less than would otherwise be the case.

I'm still a bit of wreck though

Keith