Today I learned that you can have sleep apnea without gasping and choking in the night and, usefully, that I have moderate sleep apnea. The at-home study didn't pick up anything because my oxygen saturation didn't drop, but in the in-lab study they recorded an average of 20 arousals per hour (normal is up to 5) due to moving my jaw around to reopen my airway. CPAP order's in progress, and I should have it in a couple of weeks.

I don't think sleep apnea is the cause of all of my issues, however. My sleep doctor said that sleep apnea can and will progress, but the timescale is more like decades than years. My condition has gone pretty steadily downhill for the past four or five years, which is somewhat speedier than implied. Also, there's still the matter of the positive EBV EA test result. I do wonder if it is not severe enough to be causing major trouble; the Labcorp test comes with a disclaimer that it's qualitative and not quantitative, so the number shouldn't be used for an indication of severity, but with other more severe folks' levels much higher than my 15 (with a negative cutoff of 10) I'm suspicious.

I am going to go ahead with testing for enteroviruses, if I can get someone to route my samples appropriately. I'm also still planning on a CMV check and a recheck for EBV (even though no one will attest to the accuracy of the score). Finally, as I discovered that the IGF-1 test I thought I had two years ago wound up being free growth hormone, which is practically useless for my purposes, I'm going to get that tested as well. I have a childhood history of growth hormone deficiency, which was successfully treated, but I haven't been retested. My symptom set is a good match, so if my IGF-1 is low and the CPAP doesn't improve me sufficiently I'll consider pursuing that pain-in-the-thigh definitive testing. I know that IGF-1 is far from a perfect test, but it's a quick and easy start.

Anyway, I'm going to go get some sleep, and be thankful that I have a treatable piece of the puzzle.

tl;dr enterovirus=unknown, growth hormone deficiency=unknown, sleep apnea=unexpectedly yes

Day 30

I think the sore throat has deserted me. Another household member also got a mild sore throat, around the same time, which cleared up early in the day like mine... ah well. Perhaps sleep will not desert me; we have assembled the new bed frame.

Day 29

Managed to avoid yesterday's symptoms today. Worn out from last night, but had a slow and nicely not-depressed day.

Day 27

Was able to sleep through the night, and have had a reasonably good energy day today. Not amazing, but not terrible, and better than this past week. I'm interested to see how I feel tomorrow, if I can sleep through tonight again.

Day 25

Bit more energy today, unfortunately offset by external stressors. Had some oat bran in the evening. Gonna try to take it slow this coming week.

Day 23

Slept extra again, almost 7 hours. Mood issues. I have some hormonal interference going on; hopefully it will pass in the next day or two.

Day 21

Things which were a bad idea today:

• the allergy pill (levocetirizine) which seems to have encouraged me to sleep for an extra 8 hours today
• 300mg NOW a-GPC which seems to have caused a depressive episode within 1h of ingestion; it's wearing off now, but I'm just gonna avoid that one in the future. Interesting topic for later research when the world is not quite so grey any more.

Day 19

Regrouping and rearranging today, based on Josh's recommendations and my challenges so far. I've rearranged things so I'm not taking anything before I have food in the morning, so 🤞 no more nausea. I've tried glycine and creatine mixed in with my BCAAs and that's working well, so I'll keep that up instead of encapsulating them. Doses of everything are pretty much back to baseline levels.

Diet will have more protein; I'll add sandwiches on nutritionally-useful bread into the rotation, and get someone in the house to cook some chicken so it's not all fish all the time. That should give me a little more variety, and be a little less effort for me to prepare on bad days (physical or mental).