It's a Give and Take

Update on my sleeping: I had a revelation the other day. Wait for it....I feel awake!

Yay, I don't get exhausted randomly and often throughout the day. I don't think "if only I had a soft pillow right now..." anymore. I don't fall asleep during staff meetings. I have a memory again! I feel alert most of the time. I think I'm normal feeling now.

I went to see my specialist on Thursday 2 weeks ago. He doubled my dosage because, although I have been feeling better, I continue to have hallucinations, sleep walking and sleep talking. The clonazapam is supposed to shut my brain's door at night so my body will stay still while my brain is actively prancing around without my body's knowledge. Since that wasn't happening, he doubled my dosage and said "Let's see!"

Well, it worked. It worked too well. Not only did I not wake up, or move, or talk or anything strange at night, but I couldn't get up to my alarm clock either! Me! Not waking up on time! What!?! That meant, the 5am wake up call for the gym turned into a 6am wake up call to get up to go to work which resulted in me hitting the snooze button 2-3 times and then I would have to scurry to get ready for work!

Before this, the snooze button was a useless button to me. Who uses snooze button, I always thought. Why prolong the inevitable. Just get out of bed and set your alarm for when you actually need to get up. Not only was I using the snooze button, but I was actually going right back to sleep in seconds. I tried taking the pills earlier in the night but the same thing kept happening. Once I was up it was ok, but getting up was so hard.

I reduced my dosage back down to half. I guess I'm just going to have some night time happenings but it doesn't matter because, overall, I have had a significant improvement in the daytime. Don't get me wrong, I still want to go to bed around 9pm, but I'm ok almost all day long. I have days where I'm tired, but it's more physical tired or mental exhaustion from work - not this unknown force that was pressing down on me that I couldn't get out from under it.

So, I will merrily go along now feeling better with the medication. Except, there's the "take" part. I don't have desire for food anymore. At first, I thought "This is awesome!" thinking I wouldn't overeat and feel bad anymore. I would just eat healthy and be fine. But then I started to realize, I don't care to eat anything which would mean I would skip a meal because nothing appealed to me, then I would get grumpy (as one would normally do when they didn't eat). It would be ok most days at work because I had a routine of eating but I didn't want dinner (it never was my favorite meal of the day). Me not wanting to eat meant not cooking for Bruce either. It also meant my stomach was grumbling around 8pm then I would finally eat but then I would not want to go to bed because I had just eaten. Also, I would rather just eat what was laying around rather than go through the effort of making food because it didn't matter what I ate since I don't care about food anyways! This means eating cookies and apple - balanced, right?

The other thing? I didn't realize how sad it would be to lose the enjoyment of food. I still know if it tastes good, I just don't have desire for it. I don't really care to try things anymore. I do it out of habit or because I think "I used to like this" but it's just not there. Who knew losing enjoyment from food would be sad - like a friend moving - you don't realize how much you enjoyed the company until it was gone.

There's hope! Starting January I'm trying to use diet as a way of decreasing my symptoms. My doctor has been supportive of it and I want to see how it goes. I read about some people who had worse symptoms than me that had changed their lives with diet. I'm already a pretty healthy person so I hope it will still change mine as drastically as these other people so that I can have a normal pregnancy (that's the goal now, be normal without medication so I can have a baby without harming me or the baby with sudden sleep attacks). The diet sounds simple too:
1. no caffeine (check, I don't typically have caffeine in any of it's forms - coffee, tea, soda or chocolate - pat on the back for me!)
2. no sugar (Ok, this is harder. On the meds it's fairly easy since I don't care about food, but we're talking about getting off them and then having the self control not to binge on the lovely tasting morsels. I think I can. I think I can.)
3. eat meat only at breakfast and/or lunch (apparently, meat, being a protein, is an "alerting" food. It's best to eat it early when you want to feel awake and energized to complete your day)
4. avoid meat at night and, instead, choose complex carbs (easy, this is the way I like to eat anyways - NO MEAT. Sadly, this will mean every meal Bruce and I eat together will be different because he has to have a high protein, high calorie diet for his health. Go figure).

My doctor told me I have to be like a soldier. He's all for me trying anything that makes the symptoms lesson, but I have to have a strict routine. That's my chance. Get up and go to bed at the same time, even on weekends. Eat a healthy diet with the food spaced evenly throughout the day. Avoid stress (hehe) and exercise regularly. I can do this, right?

Costume Christmas Party!

Yay for Stephanie! She likes theme parties so we were invited to our first costume Christmas party this year. Bruce dressed as Ralphie from "A Christmas Story" and I was the Virgin Mary. Britt and Katie came with us. Katie didn't have a "costume" so she went as Donna Reed from "It's a Wonderful Life" and Britt was "Mrs. Claus."

Surprise! Des Turns 30

For the first time ever, Des and I are the same age. This is cause for celebration. It's not every year Des will turn 30 and I will be counting backwards so that I am 30 as well!

Des always gets a raw deal when she has her birthday because it's so close to Christmas. All through the years she has been given, by one person or another, a Birthdy/Xmas gift. That is lame. As an adult, Christmas parties monopolize friend's time. One year she had a Christmas party at her house on her birthday - but I don't think we even sang "Happy Birthday" to her.

She turns 30 finally - so we have to make up for all the years of her not getting proper birthday celebrations. We decided to throw a surprise party. This was difficult for a number of reasons:
1. I don't have the numbers for her friends
2. Although I can hack her email account, that doesn't mean she has email addresses for friends
3. Although I can hack her facebook account, that doesn't mean any of her friends have contact information.
4. Asking Mike is hard because Des likes to be by his side during times I'm available to talk
5. Honestly, I wasn't really sure who she would like to celebrate with.

Well, we muscled through the invitation part via evite and some sneaky maneuvers. Luckily, everyone was really good about not asking her questions about her birthday.

Des was trying to put together a birthday dinner, which was sad, and everyone kept shooting her down. I thought, she must be thinking that no one cares about her and her milestone birthday. I felt bad when I told her I didn't want to celebrate her party on Sunday due to a Gingerbread Contest I was going to. My mom kept saying she was too busy. Daddy, having just had knee surgery, was probably not feeling up to it but he said he'd do whatever. (Amazingly, he didn't spill the beans even on medication! This was not something I had even thought about since Des and Daddy don't talk on the phone much.)

Sad Des. Behind the scenes, Britt spent a day scanning old pictures, finding the number 1 song for each year she has been alive and putting them on CDs, I was creating a TV Sitcom trivia game and planning the food, mama was taking care of decorations, busy, busy, busy. Mike's job, of course, was to keep Des distracted so we could actually surprise her.

The day of the party, rumor was that Des knew something was up. I was cranky because we kept having Mike stall because Des's friends strolled in 45 minutes late to the SURPRISE PARTY! They finally made it and Des was genuinely surprised. Mike was able to distract Des by asking her to find something in the glove box so she didn't notice all her friend's cars on the side of the road as they came home.

"Mike Telling Bruce How Awesome He Was"

Yay! Success!

We played the game, listened to terrible and good music throughout the years and watched a slide show of Des's childhood pictures. Fun was had by all, I think. Des is 30. Amazing to think my little sister is that old when I'm actually somewhere around 26 or 27 years old. Funny, since I've always been a year older than her, but the world is mysterious.

Pacific Science Center Visit

Bruce and I took Ryan and Katie's boys (Ashton and Owen) to the Pacific Science Center this weekend because the Harry Potter exhibit was in town. It was a special event that you had to purchase timed tickets for because there are way too many Potter fanatics!

The PSC was soooo busy, it wasn't really as fun as it could have been. All the gadgets were being used by loads of people, there were lines, adults and children alike were being pushy. The boys were so well behaved and really wanted to try everything. They were patient and let us shush them into another exhibit to try and get away from the crowds.

The most fun was the butterfly and bug area. Apparently, not a lot of pushy adults want to hang out in this area. The PSC workers had roaches out of the cages that you could touch. At first, none of the boys wanted to touch it. Then Ryan got brave enough to put a finger on it so Ashton had to be brave and do it too. Owen, like me, decided there was no way he was touching that icky thing. After we came back through and on our way out, they wanted to see the roaches again! This time, Ashton bravely stepped up and held one. Blech! Not to be outdone, Ryan held one also. Now Owen decides to be a big boy and holds one too! He didn't hold it for very long and wouldn't take his eyes off of it, but he did it!

The exhibit for Harry Potter was pretty neat. They had the actual props from the movies and some information about them. It would have been a lot better it not for the pushy, rude, fanatical Potter fans that were really ruining it for the kids. When we began, Ryan and Ashton were trying to see the person telling us about the tour and to see the "sorting hat" that was used in the movie. When there was a gap, adults would plug it up so Ashton and Ryan couldn't see (we were the last to be let in in this group). Rude!

The woman asked if anyone wanted to be sorted and a girl up front was picked. She asked for a 2nd volunteer (adults were raising their hands even though she specifically said "child."). Ryan was on his tippy toes in the far back jumping up and down to just see and raise his hand and HE WAS PICKED!! Yay! He never gets picked for anything - even at the zoo shows which he'd seen hundreds of times! We were happy for him, but have no proof. It was a no picture zone!

Ryan was sorted into the Gryffindor house so he was really excited the rest of the weekend. Ashton and Owen weren't really familiar with the movies. Ashton didn't try to get sorted but talked with Ryan about the props as they passed them. Owen was done with the exhibit before it even started. It was kind of scary with darkness, fog and spooky sounds - not to mention the weirdos who were walking through the exhibit pushing little kids around.

Anywho, here's some of the pictures!