Sleep study problems

[fbhjr]

At my last physical my doctor was asking various questions in an effort to find a way for me to lose weight.
“How well do you sleep?” she asked.
“I have always been a light sleeper, always sleep less than I’m told is average, and often have trouble breathing at night,” I told her.
“I’m going to send you for a study for sleep apnea,” she said.
“I breathe fine if my nose isn’t clogged,” I told her. “And, it has been much, much better since we got the air filter in the bedroom.”
“It’s probably due to your weight,” she said. “If you sleep better, you’ll probably lose more weight.”
So, off to the specialist I went last October.

“I think it is allergies,” I told the specialist. “I get 6 to 7 hours of sleep very regularly and that hasn’t changed in years. While I have trouble breathing when I’m lying on my back, I’ve slept on my side since I was single digits old. My mother used to complain about it when I was a kid because she couldn’t tell if I was asleep or not as I faced away from my bedroom door on my side.
“Allergy season, or if we do something in the house that raises dust are when I have the problem.”
“But, you wake up easily?”
“Yes. Always have.”
“Do you get back to sleep quickly?”
“It depends on what woke me up, but yes, I normally do.”

So the specialist ordered chest X-rays, blood tests, overnight sleep studies and pulmonary tests.
I explained that all these tests were more than an hour from where I worked, and would be very difficult to do.
She told me to schedule them as best I could.
The X-ray and blood work I got done that day. The other two I played phone tag with and never agreed on a time.
(IT’s hard when they open 90 minutes after I get to work, close 60 minutes before I leave work, and are more than an hour away from where I work.)

The specialist called for another meeting this week to “discuss my results”.
I went in this morning.

“Your X-rays are normal and there is no problem with your blood,” she told me. “How did the other tests go?”
“I haven’t had them yet.”
“But, you’ve had since October!”
“And I’ve been very busy as I told you I would be.”
“You could have gotten them done before now!”
“I didn’t. Sorry. It is very inconvenient for me.”
“I spent a lot of time filling out the requests for those tests!”
“I told you I didn’t have much time for it.”
“Make an appointment now!” she said, and stormed out of the room.
Her assistant came in and gave me the number to call. I called it. No one answered.
“See?” I said. “I don’t have time to keep trying this.”
“They said they left you voice mails.”
“And, this is what happens when I call back.”

So, who knows. That doctor is certainly mad at me.
But, this isn’t something I’ve felt is a problem for me.
My sleep habits have not changed in decades. I’m actually sleeping better than I did 10 years ago.
It’s just a check box on their things to test and they want me to do it.

Part of me says “I should not think I know better than these doctors.”
But, the other part of me says “They ignore what I tell them I have problems with and keep blaming it on something else. Maybe if they address what I keep telling them are my concerns it would encourage me to try harder.”

My whole life various people have tried hammering the square peg of me into the round hole of standard things.
It continues to fail as it has since I was in 1st grade.

So, if I’m tired, it is tried of that.
Not lack of sleep.Thank