<5

[justdrew]

hey... welcome
rocklin

http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69656&start=0

was that a joke you made there about getting paid to google? If not please clue me to where you got that gig?

[82_28]

I saw Mike login a couple of minutes ago. Now he's gone. I refreshed fully expecting some response. Then he vanished into the ether again. Oh well, I guess he's shy. I was shy around here once too. I totally remember when I bit the bullet and provided my phone number and address on post 1. Those were the days.

[Mike_Cherni]

...

Welcome to the board, Mike.

Thank you, 82_28

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Mike makes an appearance there in that passage.

Agree.

Well worth reading and applying both rigor and intuition to algorithms and the not so algorithmic.

Disagree.

Mr. Sheldrake and I are in the early stages of an email correspondence about his methodology, and I wish to repect his view on this subject while still being able to present mine, which, imho, is vastly more skeptical than his.

But I may be wrong, as I am wrong so often.


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Mike Cherni, a forensic scientist who lives in New York City, dreamed of flying low over buildings he recognized in Manhattan. He and other passengers were upset. He felt an overwhelming sense of dread, then a tremendous impact, and that's when he woke up.

A fuller quote is here:

I dreamt that I was a passenger on a commercial jet, seated at a window seat on the left-hand side.

The cabin was filled with sunlight, and outside visibility was excellent.

I don't remember the beginning of the dream, but I remember a pervasive sense of dread.

The passengers and I were deeply concerned about the flight path we were taking; we were flying very low over Manhattan's buildings.

I have flown into New York City's three major airports many times and am familiar with the normal approach routes, and this approach was quite out of the ordinary.

I also love flying and had had no bad experiences as a passenger or any bad dreams about flying.

Yet in this dream I was very frightened about how close we were to the buildings.

Many of the passengers were very vocal and shared my concern.

I recognized buildings as we flew over them, and it was clear that we were flying directly south over the southern tip of the island.

Then there was a tremendous impact and I woke up.

This dream disturbed me for days afterward, enough that I described the dream to my wife.

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/

....................


This is the tip of the iceberg of what had happened, there is much more, but this was what I felt comfortable revealing at the time.

I deliberately misrepresented myself as a forensic scientist (my wife, Ronnie B. Harmon, has that job description) so as to maintain some measure of privacy.


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Hayelll no I ain't using my phone to call that number on my own phone. But somebody should. If I can find a nondescript phone somewhere that belongs to nobody, I'll gladly call it and see what's up with it.

Either I will answer it, my wife Ronnie will answer, or your message will be answered by an answering machine. Ronnie doesn't know that I am posting this, and I am certain she would not approve, so I ask that if someone does call that they use some discretion.

I have nothing to hide, thus the posting of my full name, email, street address and phone number.


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But yeah, tell us your story, Mike.

I don't mean to be coy, but this isn't the time or the place for me to tell my "entire story".

But I want to cautiously, slowly, come out of the dark and into the light, so to speak.

I may have nothing of value to say.

Indeed, that is likely the case, imho.


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Interestingly, the address appears to be a park as per streetview.

That is the park that is part of the Penn South Complex where I live. PS is a great union and socially conscious community, in the past month, I've bumped into a number of "Occupy Wall Street" activists living there.


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Well, a little searching discovers little about Mike, though there was this:

And here, M. Cherni mentioned in Footnotes 35 and 26 as co-author of "On Impact : Modern Warfare and the Environment - A case study of the Gulf War"

I believe that is my younger sister, Marianne Cherni. She is also widely known as Marianne Manilov.


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hey... welcome
rocklin

http://www.cpaptalk.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69656&start=0

was that a joke you made there about getting paid to google? If not please clue me to where you got that gig?

No such luck, justdrew, that was a tongue-in-cheek joke.

If I was paid every time I Googled, I'd be a millionaire.




_____________________________________________________________________________________________________



And, yes, I am known as "rocklin" on a forum for people with Sleep Disturbed Breathing, which I have.

Since 9/11, I've had great difficulty sleeping, and I now average an hour or two sleep per night.

Vivid, technicolor "dreams" now completely fracture my sleep architecture, imho, to a life threatening degree: I have an untitrated AHI of 70, and I sufferer from high blood pressure and have extensive cardiac and peripheral CV disease.

The "dreams", when I have them (by Push or by Pull) wake me up like a arcing flare in the night, and, since I can't sleep, I haunt various internet bulletin boards, such as this lovely establishment.

Since I am typically in a state of sleep-deprived exhaustion, I hope you'll all bear with me as I try to post as best I can.

I am happy to answer any questions to the best of my ability, that is all I can offer for now.


Michael Cherni
NYC

...

[82_28]

Hey, thanks, Mike! So, tell us a little about yourself. What does "<5" mean?

However, welcome. . .

[Project Willow]

Hey, thanks, Mike! So, tell us a little about yourself. What does "<5" mean?

Perhaps that is his version of the heart sign given that he has CV disease.

Welcome, Mike.

[Simulist]

Well, Mike, your dream is pretty doggone interesting.

This is the tip of the iceberg of what had happened, there is much more, but this was what I felt comfortable revealing at the time.

When/if you feel comfortable talking more about how you see your dream, some of the rest of the "iceberg of what had happened," or the topic of precognitive dreams in general, I'll be most interested to hear what you have to say. I'm especially interested in what physical or metaphysical framework you think might make such occurrences possible and real, if indeed you believe them to be.

Anyhow, welcome.

[kenoma]

Check Mike.

[Elvis]

Insomnia's a drag, for sure.

Hi, Mike.

[freemason9]

this has become somewhat entertaining

[compared2what?]

Hey, thanks, Mike! So, tell us a little about yourself. What does "<5" mean?

Perhaps that is his version of the heart sign given that he has CV disease.

Welcome, Mike.

I think it might be a reference to the AHI number with which medicine marks the boundary between normal respiration (AHI <5) and sleep-disordered breathing (AHI>5).

Welcome, Mike.

My sleep isn't all that disordered relative to yours, but it's just disordered enough that I have some remote concept of how difficult living with that level of SDB on a day-to-day must be. Although under the circumstances, "day-to-day" probably isn't a very apt description, when taken literally.

Anyway. I'm very sorry for your sorrows, from the heart. REM rebound is, without question, the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. Or can even imagine experiencing. I'm not sure that this is the right way to put it, exactly, but I find/found it so terrifying that it's difficult for me fully to credit the proposition that I survived it, although in rational terms, I know perfectly well that I did.

I very much hope it's not that rough for you, though. Of course. And (of course) you have my deepest sympathies, regardless.

I wish you big fun on RI, and plenty of it.

[compared2what?]

this has become somewhat entertaining

I hope I wasn't a buzzkill.

Seriously. I cherish your buzz.

[Mike_Cherni]

...

What does "<5" mean?

I think it might be a reference to the AHI number with which medicine marks the boundary between normal respiration (AHI <5) and sleep-disordered breathing (AHI>5).

That would be correct, compared2what?.


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In SDB medicine, to qualify as having an SDB "event" you must completely stop breathing for a minimum of ten seconds. Shallow breathing doesn't count.

If you stop breathing for "only" nine seconds, that doesn't count as an SDB event either.

Equally, If you stop breathing for much longer than ten seconds, say, perhaps over a minutes (and I have had such long-time SDB events) that isn't weighted any more than a ten second event.

To be officially diagnosed with Sleep Disordered Breathing (SDB), you must average more than five of those (ten second and over) events per hour. Thus, SDB = AHI >5.


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In my case, I averaged over seventy events per hour, or more than one (ten seconds or more) event per minute. Many of my events lasted for twenty or thirty seconds, some for over a minute.

Once my blood oxygen level dropped beyond a certain point, it was considered too dangerous to conduct the test any further, and I was awakened from my sleep by the sleep lab technicians.

At home, of course, typically there is no one to wake me, although, my wife Ronnie will awaken me if she shes me stop breathing or struggling to breathe for extended periods of time.


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Anyway. I'm very sorry for your sorrows, from the heart. REM rebound is, without question, the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. Or can even imagine experiencing. I'm not sure that this is the right way to put it, exactly, but I find/found it so terrifying that it's difficult for me fully to credit the proposition that I survived it, although in rational terms, I know perfectly well that I did.

I very much hope it's not that rough for you, though. Of course. And (of course) you have my deepest sympathies, regardless.

I am fifty-six years old, and have led a full life, and regret nothing. Many people suffer from severe SDB, so I'm hardly alone. My wife has bravely struggled with cancer for over twenty five years, so my problems seem quite trivial to me by comparison.

However, normal sleep (and dreaming) is by now completely alien to me; it's become a pipe dream of a pipe dream, so to speak.


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At some point, my body and mind simply refused to go to sleep, and I spent a full three weeks wide awake.

For me, it is difficult to adequately describe what it is like to live in terror of falling asleep for such an extended period of time.

As the days go by, you begin to hallucinate, to quite frankly, go a bit insane.

You try desperately to go to sleep, but by now, your mind will not allow it, I guess some part of the brain realizes that you are being, in effect, suffocated to death when you sleep, and in my case, my "brain" or "mind" simply refused to let me sleep.

After three weeks, utterly exhausted and nearly suicidal, I took heavy overdoses of alcohol, prescription anti-anxiety and sleep medications, and literally hammered myself to sleep in the safety of a controlled sleep lab setting.

Until recently, I was thoroughly addicted to heavy doses of the above medications / liquor (plus a handful of over-the-counter sleep medications) to get any sleep at all.

The xPAP therapy has literally been a lifesaver for me, and the friends and advice I received on CPAPtalk, a life-raft in a nightly storm. I cannot recommend the place highly enough if you suffer from SDB.


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When/if you feel comfortable talking more about how you see your dream, some of the rest of the "iceberg of what had happened," or the topic of precognitive dreams in general, I'll be most interested to hear what you have to say. I'm especially interested in what physical or metaphysical framework you think might make such occurrences possible and real, if indeed you believe them to be.

Anyhow, welcome.

Thanks, Simulist, I will do my best.

Because I, my wife, and my friends in medicine and the sciences are hard-core believers in the scientific method, I summarily rejected any possibility of "extra" or "super" natural explanation.

Quoting what I initially wrote to Mr. Rupert Sheldrake:

"I have had a number of what, for the lack of a better term, I could characterize as "predictive dreams". I must emphasize the word "could" in that preceding sentence. There are dreams by what I categorize as "push" dreams, and dreams by what I call "pull". I can elaborate on these self-coined neologisms at some other point, if you wish.

Despite these odd dreams, I must caution you that I am not a fan of paranormal "science", for what now I trust you can understand to be obvious reasons.

The world population is expected to hit seven billion later this year. (1)

Subtracting for children under the age of ten, this still leaves many billions of people old enough to reliably relate their dreams to others. (2)

People dream 365 days per year. During a normal night of sleep, humans usually experience about four or five periods of REM sleep (3)

Using 5 billion as a "spitball figure" of humans over the age of nine, the math would be as follows:

5,000,000,000 (guess-estimated number of humans 9 years of age>

Times 365 days, equals:

1,825,000,000,000

Times a conservative estimate of four periods of REM dream sleep equals:

7,300,000,000,000

That gives us an off-the-napkin number of seven trillion, three-hundred billion dreams per year.

With such numbers, that someone is bound to have a number of seemingly "predictive dreams" is almost a given.

I hope you see that my point. While perhaps not as exciting as the concept that I can actually dream of the future, the likelihood that I am just a freak of statistics seems to me to be altogether quite reasonable.

Thanking you for your time, I remain,

Sincerely Yours,

Michael Cherni
340 W. 28th Street
9D
NYC
10001


(1) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144933.htm

(2) http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailycha ... population

(3)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep
"


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I must apologize again, but my concentration is often poor to nil, and I have to strictly limit my time looking at a computer.

I will try to get some sleep and post more later tomorrow.


...

[82_28]

So, Mike, what brings you here and now? What is it that possesses you to basically not say anything, but post a bunch of personal info on yourself? I'm not being a dick. I'm just curious. It takes a bunch of people with quirks to make the world go round.

How did Sheldrake contact you for your dreamline? What are your impressions of him? Are you a forensic scientist? What is the milieu of yourself and those who have quoted you like?

[Nordic]

A few years back I experienced chronic sleep apnea so terrifying I couldn't sleep either, but nothing as terrible as what you've experienced.

I did, however, have several occasions where I would wake up, choking and completely unable to breath at all. I thought I was going to die. I would fall out of bed and crawl across the floor, not sure why now, probably trying to get to some water. This happened repeatedly, and before I would pass out, which seemed inevitable, I would finally be able to suck in some strangled bits of air.

Dr's seemed offensively unconcerned, one of them telling me if I lost 20 pounds my neck would shrink and the problem would probably go away. He also shrugged off the fear of dying, saying that once I was unconscious from lack of air, that my breathing passages would simply open up and I would breath again, and that is how people who drown get water in their lungs, breathing in the water involuntarily after they lose consciousness.

This was cold comfort.

Finally one night I fell asleep propped up on the sofa and slept like a baby. I realized that if I didn't lie flat on my back I was fine. I went to a "relax the back" store and bought a thing called a "bed wedge" which basically props you up, and never had the problem again. It terrifies me to fall asleep without it now. I can't even sleep. In hotels I just get a whole ton of pillows or cushions and make sure I'm propped up.

Weird thing is that the onset of these night terrors coincided with my life sliding seriously downhill. I have no explanation for this except that perhaps I killed a LOT of brain cells all those times when I couldn't breath and that somehow that affected my entire universe in some inexplicable ways.

And life continues to suck in several key ways.

[freemason9]

my god, that got me thinking . . . there must be at least 25 trillion human farts each year, no wonder everyone is in such a foul mood