Test Results

Well, my heart is perfectly normal - no blockages, no loose valves, no scarring, perfectly healthy heart. My renal arteries are the same. I also don't have Turner's syndrome, no sleep apnea, no restless leg syndrome and no snoring, at least not at the sleep clinic. I know I do snore because I wake myself up sometimes wondering why there is a lion in my bed...

However, when I hit REM sleep I'd wake up & not fully fall back into REM sleep - at least at the sleep clinic. Each time I woke up corresponded w/the onset of REM. Weird, huh? Most likely it's alcoholism-related. I do 'suffer' from hypnagogic imagery, aka 'night terrors' only mine are more dream-like than terrifying. Probably because I understand the psychology of sleep and my hypnagogic state is closer to lucid dreaming than it is to the night terrors that some poor folk experience. I get the weird urge to tell Rob stupid Vaudevillian jokes. I do get the REarM's, complete with roaring soccer crowds & the sensation of levitation or movement but I know it's not aliens coming to get me or spirits sitting on my chest when I feel that sleep paralysis setting in.

So I'm trying a new sleeping pill called 'Rozerem' - it's supposed to restore the natural circadian rhythms, even for shift workers such as myself. If it doesn't work, I've got another prescription for Elavil, my personal wonder-drug.

I am also thankfully almost done with this round of algebra. 2 more weeks - it went by a lot faster than anticipated.

Tattoos

My next tattoo will probably be a Native American-type bear claw with lightning bolts running from the claws themselves down my arm. Something to honor the bear within me, my berserker ancestors, and balance out Coyote on my left arm.

I found this, though, in 'The Woman in the Shaman's Body'...



I've always had an affinity for horses, beyond that of a teenaged girl's affinity. Never been able to live my life around them like I'd like to - I'd love a horse & dog life despite my being an urbanite. Have an estate in the country, or just a trailer out in the high desert of Arizona or New Mexico.

I'm thinking after the bear, then the horse. I like the strong black & white of this, almost like tribal knotwork but more fluid - you can see how the horse's neck arches, see how it's belly is in connection with the earth as much as its hooves are connected to the air. It's a traditional image painted on Mongolian shamans' drums - they ride their drums like horses through the spirit world.

I think it would look great on my back, where I need the strength the most.