Sunday, March 15, 2015

so this is what it's like.

Having given up on my G.P. being any more useful than he was being, we got a recommendation from the community for a psychiatrist who likes weird cases. He's very much like Dr. House, only he's extremely nice and caring, and not obviously addicted to opiates. I tell him all the random little things that an ordinary doctor would ignore--for example, that I was waking up at night sweating for no good reason, or that coffee has always made me tired--and those little things become important clues.

There's a possibility my symptoms all come from some mysterious auto-immune thing, but in the meantime the going theory was that I've been suffering a general disregulation of the nervous system. He prescribed a drug from that magical group called "anticonvulsants," which comes from the Greek for "we don't really know why it works, but it seems to be really useful." The initial motivation was that it might help me stay asleep at night (I had been starting to wake up no matter what I did), but the hope was that it would have what is essentially a tonic effect on my nervous system.

Fast-forward a month later, and things are...different.
  • I've been running every other day. The last time I tried running was like 6 months ago, and I was exhausted and useless for a week.
  • Exercise doesn't leave me exhausted for the rest of the day (though aikido will be the acid test there--running didn't used to wipe me out).
  • Coffee does not make me tired. Sometimes it's even a little boost of mental energy.
  • I don't need 2 naps to make it through the day. I actually don't nap at all. (I might nap once a day if I drank less coffee.)
This is all apparently how normal people experience the world. I had only read about it in books, or smiled and nodded when people talked happily about feeling refreshed after exercising.

I do get tired in the evenings towards bedtime, but Anna assures me that this, too, is normal.