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Tried to get up and join in (even if undermotivated), but every time I started mustering myself, the gaggle of kids would suddenly kick up the noise factor and I'd fall back. Ended up in bed for pretty much the whole thing. By the time I went down, I was due for lunch and running a low blood sugar. Mom put something together for me in the kitchen, which I ate slowly with a shaking hand. Said hello and goodbye to a bunch of people whilst painfully struggling to see straight. Hit the couch. Am able to walk almost normally now, but still tired and headachy.
Don't know what I'll do later - try to stay up into the morning, so I can at least see people for a while (those who slept over, anyway), maybe even drop my sister off at an early train (she somehow still teaches tomorrow, before coming back for second Seder in the evening)? Or try to go to bed and get something like a night's sleep and maybe possibly somehow manage to attend part of second Seder?
I did realize something, lying on the couch thinking things over. It's about diabetes and sleep and stuff.
I'm diabetic. What that means is that there's something wrong with my body's insulin production. (In my specific case, my immune system has killed off the cells that make insulin.) Insulin acts as a sort of key that allows sugar to travel from the bloodstream through cells walls and into the cells. Without it, no matter how much you eat, the cells can't actually get the nourishment. The sugar just floats around in your blood until it gets filtered out through the kidneys. Until the discovery of insulin therapy, diabetes was a death sentence. It was "the wasting disease." No matter what you did, no matter what you ate, your body wasn't getting any good out of it. So you lived off your reserves until you ran out (within a few months, at the most) and that was it.
Now, of course, we have treatment for diabetes. It's not a cure by any means, but with medication and constant vigilance, a diabetic can live an almost normal life. But as careful as you are, the fact is that you're manually tweaking what's supposed to be a realtime automatic process. It's always possible that things will fall out of balance, that your sugar level will go too low or too high. It can be fixed, but it can affect a lot of things before things return to normal. Including sleep. A low blood sugar will generally wake you up. A high sugar can interfere with your sleep without waking you up.
I also have a thyroid condition. Treated with hormone replacement, but that also means manually maintaining the balance. It's a much more gradual process, but if it gets out of balance, it can also, among other things, interfere with your sleep.
I've also got something going on with my body clock and light cues. Don't have a name for it, but that whole system is basically screwed up. I don't respond to light, and my whole sleep/wake cycle is thrown off. (Which is why I'm on a more or less 25 hour day.)
I've also got sleep apnea. When you dream, your body temporarily paralyzes all your muscles. (So you don't go flailing around and hurt yourself.) All of them, of course, except your heart and your diaphragm. The muscles attached to your ribs, which normally help you breathe, are paralyzed. You're only breathing from your diaphragm. So if there's anything that makes it hard for your to breathe, you won't get enough oxygen. In response, you start to wake up. Your muscles are allowed to move again, so you can breathe. You generally don't wake up all the way, but it's enough to make sure that you don't get the restorative effects of REM (dream) sleep. That's why I sleep with a BiPAP, which pressurizes the air for me, forcing the airway to stay open. (I have a feeling that because I've gained weight recently, the pressure needs to be upped. Again. I'm already on a very high setting, despite having my tonsils, uvula, and anything else they could get away with cut out to help widen the airway.)
I've also got fibromyalgia. It's not well understood, but for some reason fibro patients don't get enough deep sleep. Normally, when you sleep, you go through a cycle with stages of lighter sleep and deeper sleep. Fibro patients leave the deeper sleep too early and jolt too far into the lighter stage (not quite waking up, but close). I take pills (Lyrica) to help with that, but it doesn't entirely fix the problem.
For all I know, there's something else going on, too, on top of all that. But what I realized is that it comes down to one thing: I have sleep diabetes.
That is, all those disorders combine to make sure that I don't get proper "nourishment" from my sleep. Without careful treatment of the things that can be treated, I barely get any good from it, no matter how much I sleep. Even with treatment, it's not quite right. Better, but far short of "normal."
It's nothing new, of course. Just a new way of labeling it, a new way of thinking about it.
Don't know what I'll do later - try to stay up into the morning, so I can at least see people for a while (those who slept over, anyway), maybe even drop my sister off at an early train (she somehow still teaches tomorrow, before coming back for second Seder in the evening)? Or try to go to bed and get something like a night's sleep and maybe possibly somehow manage to attend part of second Seder?
I did realize something, lying on the couch thinking things over. It's about diabetes and sleep and stuff.
I'm diabetic. What that means is that there's something wrong with my body's insulin production. (In my specific case, my immune system has killed off the cells that make insulin.) Insulin acts as a sort of key that allows sugar to travel from the bloodstream through cells walls and into the cells. Without it, no matter how much you eat, the cells can't actually get the nourishment. The sugar just floats around in your blood until it gets filtered out through the kidneys. Until the discovery of insulin therapy, diabetes was a death sentence. It was "the wasting disease." No matter what you did, no matter what you ate, your body wasn't getting any good out of it. So you lived off your reserves until you ran out (within a few months, at the most) and that was it.
Now, of course, we have treatment for diabetes. It's not a cure by any means, but with medication and constant vigilance, a diabetic can live an almost normal life. But as careful as you are, the fact is that you're manually tweaking what's supposed to be a realtime automatic process. It's always possible that things will fall out of balance, that your sugar level will go too low or too high. It can be fixed, but it can affect a lot of things before things return to normal. Including sleep. A low blood sugar will generally wake you up. A high sugar can interfere with your sleep without waking you up.
I also have a thyroid condition. Treated with hormone replacement, but that also means manually maintaining the balance. It's a much more gradual process, but if it gets out of balance, it can also, among other things, interfere with your sleep.
I've also got something going on with my body clock and light cues. Don't have a name for it, but that whole system is basically screwed up. I don't respond to light, and my whole sleep/wake cycle is thrown off. (Which is why I'm on a more or less 25 hour day.)
I've also got sleep apnea. When you dream, your body temporarily paralyzes all your muscles. (So you don't go flailing around and hurt yourself.) All of them, of course, except your heart and your diaphragm. The muscles attached to your ribs, which normally help you breathe, are paralyzed. You're only breathing from your diaphragm. So if there's anything that makes it hard for your to breathe, you won't get enough oxygen. In response, you start to wake up. Your muscles are allowed to move again, so you can breathe. You generally don't wake up all the way, but it's enough to make sure that you don't get the restorative effects of REM (dream) sleep. That's why I sleep with a BiPAP, which pressurizes the air for me, forcing the airway to stay open. (I have a feeling that because I've gained weight recently, the pressure needs to be upped. Again. I'm already on a very high setting, despite having my tonsils, uvula, and anything else they could get away with cut out to help widen the airway.)
I've also got fibromyalgia. It's not well understood, but for some reason fibro patients don't get enough deep sleep. Normally, when you sleep, you go through a cycle with stages of lighter sleep and deeper sleep. Fibro patients leave the deeper sleep too early and jolt too far into the lighter stage (not quite waking up, but close). I take pills (Lyrica) to help with that, but it doesn't entirely fix the problem.
For all I know, there's something else going on, too, on top of all that. But what I realized is that it comes down to one thing: I have sleep diabetes.
That is, all those disorders combine to make sure that I don't get proper "nourishment" from my sleep. Without careful treatment of the things that can be treated, I barely get any good from it, no matter how much I sleep. Even with treatment, it's not quite right. Better, but far short of "normal."
It's nothing new, of course. Just a new way of labeling it, a new way of thinking about it.
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It's sad you have to go through this, though. ******hugs******
Take care ♥!