Monday, March 16, 2009

Sleep Schedule Fail

On Tuesday I called the doctor to see how I ought to be handling a cold with my compromised immune system. They didn’t call back. On Wednesday I called again. By the time they called me back on Wednesday night and told me I should come in, I couldn’t get an appointment until Thursday afternoon. When I finally went in the doctor did a strep test and a CBC (complete blood count) and determined that it really was nothing more than the common cold.

But having even just the common cold on top of the aches, pains and fatigue of RA has really sucked and, I think, brought me to my lowest point yet over the last delightful ten months. I feel just awful – both physically and mentally. My whole body hurts, I have literally zero energy, and I’ve been pretty bummed out.

As a result I’ve been sleeping a lot. And we’re talking college-style sleep-through-half-the-day sleeping. Only in college I’d sleep through the whole morning because I stayed up until 3 or 4 am the night before. Now I’m going to bed around 11:00pm and still sleeping until after noon. Over the weekend I slept until after 1:00pm both days.

APL and I decided that I might start feeling a little bit better if I could get myself on a more regular sleep schedule. So we decided to set me an alarm this morning. Last night we went to bed after 1:00am, because APL went to a concert and I stayed up watching a movie and waiting for him to get home. (Surprise, surprise I didn’t feel well enough to go to the concert with him.) So we decided to start slow. We set my alarm this morning for 11:00am.

When it went off, I proceeded to hit snooze for an hour. At noon, I looked over at the alarm and decided to get up. So I turned the alarm off. Then next thing I knew it was 2:15pm and I was still in bed. I’m blaming it on the combination of the dose of methotrexate and NyQuil I took last night, but man. Talk about failing in my attempt to get on a normal sleep schedule.

The sad thing is that it doesn’t really matter that I slept most of the day away, because I didn’t have any plans anyhow. I guess I can always try to get up at a reasonable hour again tomorrow.

1 comment:

~kelly marie~ said...

I am so sorry about this evil cold. I always used to (well, let's be truthful, still) feel bad when I sleep in or over sleep. I try to make myself feel better by saying that I wouldn't sleep that much if I didn't need it. And, really, that is true. So I am glad you are sleeping and taking care of yourself.