Mad as a Hatter

Been off the Hetlioz for a week now.

It has been a week of living Hell.

I've hardly been able to move. I feel more dead than alive. I'm too lightheaded and woozy to think. Or do much of anything. I saw my GP yesterday. He was really impressed with how absolutely fucked up I was. Nearly passed out in the chair as he was ordering my prescriptions. Almost couldn't get off the exam table by myself. Nearly collapsed while the secretary got the bill ready. (I stumbled over to a chair and let Dad take care of it.)

I can't tell if I'm getting any better because my memory is shot, too. The whole week is less than a blur.

I keep thinking of things like Batman getting his ass kicked by Bane. Batman is dead on his feet, having utterly exhausted himself. And Bane just beats the [preferred euphemism here] out of him. "I wonder which will break first - your body or your spirit?" That's how I feel.

I'm too tired to live.

Just surviving hour by hour, sometimes minute by minute, in the faint hope that this will get better and I can go back to merely feeling sick and tired. I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.

I haven't written a weekly summary for myself. I was just too tired to do it on Wednesday, which says something in and of itself. I haven't been woozy since the end of Week 1, but I haven't been sleeping well since then, either. I was hoping it would settle down, but I'm basically on a roller coaster. I don't sleep well one night, so I sleep a lot the next night and then I can't sleep the night after that so I make it up (or at least try to) on the following night. Except that the experiment parameters don't let me sleep in very much, either, so that's kind of been an issue. The good news is that I have been basically keeping to a steady bedtime for almost a month. The bad news is that during that month I've been too tired to do much. Even by my standards. I have an appointment with the sleep doctor on Wednesday morning. I'll go over it with her and see what we can come up with.

Other than that, I was talking to my sister about the dog (while she was here for the holiday). He's getting old and doesn't move around much. She asked me if he's in constant pain. It's hard to tell with him because he's never complained about pain. But the fact that he won't stand up unless he has to says a lot to me. So I said "Yes." But she asked me how I knew, and I realized that I don't, really. I'm just guessing. Just a little while ago I realized that I'm probably a little biased on that question, and it hit me why: There has not been a moment in the last 20 years when I wasn't in at least some pain. Not always bad. I've learned to put it out of my mind as background noise most of the time. But it's always there. That's been the reality of my life. Which I've just sort of accepted and not thought much about, for the most part. But that made me take a step back.

There has not been a moment in the last 20 years when I have not been in at least some pain.

I just needed a minute to step back and process that statement, you know?

A week on the Hetlioz now. Quick summary:

Good news: I'm actually falling asleep at 11pm every night. If anything, it's hard to stay up that late. That's pretty much unprecedented for me.

Bad news: I'm woozy for most of the day. Spending hours on the couch because my head is spinning so much it's hard to sit up. It's a little better now than when I first started, but it's far from good. And, in a way, so is being tired enough to fall asleep early even after sleeping 10.6 hours. I'm sleeping more like 10 hours a night than my usual 9, too. It's nice being on a steady schedule and all, but not if the price is being too tired and woozy to function.