Your Health Education for the Day
So if you saw my part of the friending meme over at allzugern's LJ yesterday, you may already know my news and oh hey! Hi new people!! I'll do a proper introductory post today or tomorrow (and for the love of puppies and kittens, don't hold me to that), but first my entire medical history (well, almost). Heh.
So the story is this. Since the time I was 15, I've slept more than other people. At that point I slept about 14 hours a day in an actual bed, and a significant more amount of time slumped over my desk at school. I've gone through various stages of sleeping more or sleeping less ever since, but have never been able to go without at least one nap during the day - like cannot go without, as in I will be in pain, crying, and/or meaner than hell if I don't get it. I have often been so tired that I feel like throwing up, or so tired it's quite simply hard to breathe. Yet at night it can be hard to sleep and, no, suffering through the pain of not taking naps does NOT help. Believe me. I tried. Repeatedly. *shudders*
You can see where this might be a wee inconvenient.
If you don't, imagine explaining to, oh, your boss. It's fun, really, particularly when you don't know why you're that way although after 15 years you're pretty certain you're actually a lazy slacker hypochondriac (with a smashing sense of humor of course, but I digress). Within that time, diagnoses from various doctors ranged from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Chronic Epstein Barr Virus at the time), depression (2 or 3 times), hypoglycemia, neurocardiogenic syncope (postural orthostatic tachychardia syndrome and post-pranadial hypotension), hypovolemia, thyroid something or other, delayed sleep phase syndrome, sheer hard headed bitchiness, and, um, I've kinda forgot the rest.
If you know what all those are, congratulations! You win! I'm not sure what, but I'll get back to you. Something involving double espresso probably.
Anyway, after however many doctors (through relocations mostly), lots of blood tests (NO I don't need my thyroid checked AGAIN - 4 times in the last year, thanks), CAT scans, MRIs, X-Rays, a sleep study, etc., and they still haven't got a solid diagnosis? Hypochondria starts to look like a sure thing. I always did have a good imagination anyway.
Add to this a decade worth of sleeping through college and ending up with an associate's degree after five years of education while drifting from job to job with wildly varying levels of success (as one former supervisor put it, "When you're good, you're superwoman, but then, all the sudden, you just... aren't.") and you can see where a person might experience a certain amount of frustration. Being consistently tired, sometimes painfully so, generally leads to all sorts of things like a complete intolerance for stupidity and a distinct lack of patience for social niceties... which makes office politics one of Hercules' labors. Not to mention the incessant headaches, profound feeling of being cold, and persistent aches and pains.
All of this makes yesterday one I may very well celebrate annually. Despite the conclusions of one incompetent specialist (that man needs to RETIRE), my doctor is proceeding with the diagnosis of narcolepsy.
!!!
That's a TREATABLE DIAGNOSIS OMFG. Not cureable, but treatable, and I TOLD YOU SO, WORLD. *totally glosses over any previous suspicions of own hypochondria or sheer laziness*
I should point out that all those previous diagnoses up there are all totally valid conditions but either a) were made off the cuff "why are you still here in my office?" and "oh, hell, not you again" or b) are symptoms rather than a condition in and of themselves. The neurocardiogenic syncope for example: my brain doesn't send the proper signals for moment by moment regulation of my blood pressure resulting in things like me often getting dizzy when I stand up and getting cold after I eat. There are a number of different conditions which can cause this and it certainly didn't explain everything in my case.
So, back to the narcolepsy. The first thing everyone thinks of with said condition is someone literally falling asleep. Called cataplexy, it is experienced by approximately 70% of narcoleptics, but can range from the very obvious to so brief and subtle the patient themselves may not realize they're experiencing it. To be honest, I don't know whether I've experienced more than one attack of cataplexy or not (that's another story, although one would indicate more), but frequency also ranges from several times daily for some poor folks to just a couple times a year. If this were the major, defining symptom, narcolepsy would be easy to diagnose. Instead, there is an average of 15 years between suspected onset (usually between 15 and 25 years of age) and actual diagnosis.
Which makes me average. Heh.
So, in the interest of education, some links:
Narcolepsy: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment
The Mayo Clinic on narcolepsy
Wikipedia article on narcolepsy
Today I started taking my new meds - a variation on amphetamines designed to override the irresistible urge to sleep during the 15 hours it's in my system. Narcolepsy is, at it's core, the body's inability to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. In other words, REM sleep interferes during what should be waking hours causing weakness and/or the need for sleep. It also interferes during times of actual sleep by disrupting the natural progression through the stages of sleep - I drop into REM sleep very quickly and don't spend nearly enough time in deep sleep, resulting in a poorer overall quality of rest. My dreams though? Wild and usually completely inexplicable, but ask me about the serial killer and the cheese slicer sometime.
The theory goes that my body is getting too much "rest" without getting enough actual deep sleep - caught in that middle ground that is REM sleep. If the REM function can be suppressed for 15 - 16 hours, then the body will be actually tired enough to override the REM function during true sleep and spend more time in the oh so necessary deep sleep. I can vouch that being utterly exhausted does result in better quality sleep for me, but it's hard to be utterly exhausted by that point when you cannot help but sleep during the day. The end result is too much rest and a kind of persistent sleep deprivation. Talk about a catch-22, but without enough deep sleep things break down despite the average to above average hours of sleep overall. And the first person to suggest I just not take naps gets shot. It's really, really, really not optional without massive doses of caffeine and lots of adrenaline.
Even with the meds, scheduling 2 to 3 mini-naps (about 15 minutes) is part of the regime and it's about that time, so I'll sign off. If anyone knows of additional resources on the condition, I would appreciate the information and/or links. Hope everyone is having a good day!! I sure as hell am. :)
So the story is this. Since the time I was 15, I've slept more than other people. At that point I slept about 14 hours a day in an actual bed, and a significant more amount of time slumped over my desk at school. I've gone through various stages of sleeping more or sleeping less ever since, but have never been able to go without at least one nap during the day - like cannot go without, as in I will be in pain, crying, and/or meaner than hell if I don't get it. I have often been so tired that I feel like throwing up, or so tired it's quite simply hard to breathe. Yet at night it can be hard to sleep and, no, suffering through the pain of not taking naps does NOT help. Believe me. I tried. Repeatedly. *shudders*
You can see where this might be a wee inconvenient.
If you don't, imagine explaining to, oh, your boss. It's fun, really, particularly when you don't know why you're that way although after 15 years you're pretty certain you're actually a lazy slacker hypochondriac (with a smashing sense of humor of course, but I digress). Within that time, diagnoses from various doctors ranged from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (Chronic Epstein Barr Virus at the time), depression (2 or 3 times), hypoglycemia, neurocardiogenic syncope (postural orthostatic tachychardia syndrome and post-pranadial hypotension), hypovolemia, thyroid something or other, delayed sleep phase syndrome, sheer hard headed bitchiness, and, um, I've kinda forgot the rest.
If you know what all those are, congratulations! You win! I'm not sure what, but I'll get back to you. Something involving double espresso probably.
Anyway, after however many doctors (through relocations mostly), lots of blood tests (NO I don't need my thyroid checked AGAIN - 4 times in the last year, thanks), CAT scans, MRIs, X-Rays, a sleep study, etc., and they still haven't got a solid diagnosis? Hypochondria starts to look like a sure thing. I always did have a good imagination anyway.
Add to this a decade worth of sleeping through college and ending up with an associate's degree after five years of education while drifting from job to job with wildly varying levels of success (as one former supervisor put it, "When you're good, you're superwoman, but then, all the sudden, you just... aren't.") and you can see where a person might experience a certain amount of frustration. Being consistently tired, sometimes painfully so, generally leads to all sorts of things like a complete intolerance for stupidity and a distinct lack of patience for social niceties... which makes office politics one of Hercules' labors. Not to mention the incessant headaches, profound feeling of being cold, and persistent aches and pains.
All of this makes yesterday one I may very well celebrate annually. Despite the conclusions of one incompetent specialist (that man needs to RETIRE), my doctor is proceeding with the diagnosis of narcolepsy.
!!!
That's a TREATABLE DIAGNOSIS OMFG. Not cureable, but treatable, and I TOLD YOU SO, WORLD. *totally glosses over any previous suspicions of own hypochondria or sheer laziness*
I should point out that all those previous diagnoses up there are all totally valid conditions but either a) were made off the cuff "why are you still here in my office?" and "oh, hell, not you again" or b) are symptoms rather than a condition in and of themselves. The neurocardiogenic syncope for example: my brain doesn't send the proper signals for moment by moment regulation of my blood pressure resulting in things like me often getting dizzy when I stand up and getting cold after I eat. There are a number of different conditions which can cause this and it certainly didn't explain everything in my case.
So, back to the narcolepsy. The first thing everyone thinks of with said condition is someone literally falling asleep. Called cataplexy, it is experienced by approximately 70% of narcoleptics, but can range from the very obvious to so brief and subtle the patient themselves may not realize they're experiencing it. To be honest, I don't know whether I've experienced more than one attack of cataplexy or not (that's another story, although one would indicate more), but frequency also ranges from several times daily for some poor folks to just a couple times a year. If this were the major, defining symptom, narcolepsy would be easy to diagnose. Instead, there is an average of 15 years between suspected onset (usually between 15 and 25 years of age) and actual diagnosis.
Which makes me average. Heh.
So, in the interest of education, some links:
Narcolepsy: Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment
The Mayo Clinic on narcolepsy
Wikipedia article on narcolepsy
Today I started taking my new meds - a variation on amphetamines designed to override the irresistible urge to sleep during the 15 hours it's in my system. Narcolepsy is, at it's core, the body's inability to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. In other words, REM sleep interferes during what should be waking hours causing weakness and/or the need for sleep. It also interferes during times of actual sleep by disrupting the natural progression through the stages of sleep - I drop into REM sleep very quickly and don't spend nearly enough time in deep sleep, resulting in a poorer overall quality of rest. My dreams though? Wild and usually completely inexplicable, but ask me about the serial killer and the cheese slicer sometime.
The theory goes that my body is getting too much "rest" without getting enough actual deep sleep - caught in that middle ground that is REM sleep. If the REM function can be suppressed for 15 - 16 hours, then the body will be actually tired enough to override the REM function during true sleep and spend more time in the oh so necessary deep sleep. I can vouch that being utterly exhausted does result in better quality sleep for me, but it's hard to be utterly exhausted by that point when you cannot help but sleep during the day. The end result is too much rest and a kind of persistent sleep deprivation. Talk about a catch-22, but without enough deep sleep things break down despite the average to above average hours of sleep overall. And the first person to suggest I just not take naps gets shot. It's really, really, really not optional without massive doses of caffeine and lots of adrenaline.
Even with the meds, scheduling 2 to 3 mini-naps (about 15 minutes) is part of the regime and it's about that time, so I'll sign off. If anyone knows of additional resources on the condition, I would appreciate the information and/or links. Hope everyone is having a good day!! I sure as hell am. :)