Ok, I’m learning I HATE mood-effecting pills. Things have been going much better since my last blog entry, but I do have more than usual to juggle because of the issues with stress/emotions/weather. I’m finally on a sleep-inducing pill to trigger proper sleep (of course, it leaves my mouth tasting like I just licked the biggest, nastiest pesticide-sprayed lemon this side of the world), Oxepax to depress racing thoughts and moodswings, and my normal antidepressant.
This IS getting ANNOYING even though everything’s on the Up-and-Up. Heck, I’m even going to get a new insulin pump! I actually slept well last monday night, without too much convincing – I had been down to my mother-in-law’s neighbor for some foot massage, and I didn’t have any ‘duties’ to keep my mind preoccupied about the next day. I went to bed early, lay down, and that was it until 12 the next day with a slightly elevated blood sugar.
It’s not just mood and concerns that have been making these past two weeks hard, but also blood sugar! I simply *WANT* to get the most out of my insulin pump possible, but my doctor, when setting a basal rate for my pump (the insulin you receive daily on an hourly basis), set them so high I was suffering low blood sugars the whole evening after seeing him.
So I just called in, got permission to change my basal rate down one tenth of a unit per hour, and continued from there. I was very close to getting back to a sleep pattern then, because oxepax can be a very powerful sedative – but my blood sugar was intervening again. Every time I’d fall asleep at the beginning of the night, I’d end up with a horrible low three hours later – the basal rate for the night was simply too high.
And when you wake up at midnight with your body in panic-mode because of lows, you don’t fall asleep again easy. I’d end up sitting at my desk, sucking on grape-sugar tablets and beading, reading or puttering around on my macmini. *Sigh* This wasn’t great for hubby, because he was trying to get me to relax and sleep through the rest of the night. He’s been up regularly at 3am or even several times to check on me and poke me to bed, but it often didn’t help.
I’d be thinking sad thoughts, or simply restless because of discomfort or my blood sugar again giving me issues. I’m actually relatively sensitive to the insulin I’m on, and I haven’t had my rates set to a reasonable level until yesterday while I was out with my pump nurse.
Which, oh by the way, is my Christmas present of sorts! I almost ended up with one of these during college, but I got the offer in the mail a month too late. 
This pump is smart about how much insulin it gives you at meals, because you can tell it how many carbohydrates you’re going to eat at the meal. It’s a real step up from what I already have, which I haven’t been able to use very efficiently. It’s hard to remember to use the pump to give myself extra insulin before I eat, and I just end up in the same cruel circle of insulin shots as before. You need to know or even be a diabetic yourself on insulin to understand what I mean, but at least my parents do – one low blood sugar leading to a high again, correcting high blood sugars all the time, and feeling sick and depressed because of it all.
I awoke this morning refreshed and feeling better than I have in what seems like ages – at last things are in order and I have what I need to get my sleep cycle in order. Mike’s been very good to me, fixing the draft in the bedroom window, doing his best to get me to fall asleep by being there to listen when I am crying or really need to get emotional thoughts off my chest – A lot of things where any other guy would just despair and move away. We’ve both been going through a lot – I started to stress out and loose sleep the same weekend Mike’s wrist was keeping him from sleeping at all. He has carpal tunnel syndrome and the weather was rather turbulent that weekend/week – it’s been paining him awfully, and he doesn’t want to become addicted to strong painkillers.
My troubles started getting his mood down too, but when we talked and saw that my dad and other relatives were causing me stress by correspondence, Mike wrote to them to get them to lay off. We’re visiting in February, and we need it to be just restful, not to have people writhing in their own agendas to our time to rest. My father, grandmother, mother .. these people all have the bad habit of trying to cram a vacation chock-full or trying to accommodating everyone else’s wishes, and the situation had reached boiling point. THAT was my insomnia trigger, and my upcoming diabetes doctor appointment the next friday.
Well, Mike has had time to see our local doctor himself, and time to sleep in patches at his moms, and/or here at home, but it hasn’t been easy, with little to no room for us to be out of eachother’s way and enjoy privacy. We have only two rooms, and hubby works and sleeps down in the livingroom, and I occupy the bedroom with my desk and such. I can hear everything he does downstairs, and he can hear everything I do upstairs, especially if I go to the bathroom through the creaking door.
We love our home – it’s beautiful, but we are in a bad way at the moment with it and our stressed-out situation. Hubby and I are on the same medications now, except he is just beginning on antidepressives, and he has been taking oxepax to help him relax or fall asleep. We have had moments of resting together watching TV, or just hugging – it brings us closer because this is a situation where we need and rely upon eachother – but then again, being together makes it very, very hard. When stressed we need space to daydream, after all.
When I woke up this morning I was rested, excited and laughing anew at unusual things – I hadn’t had my oxepax, and acting a bit manic. One doesn’t see it until one is TOLD, and Mike let me know quite abruptly that it was bad. I’d called down the hall to ask him where he was heading to because I heard the door opening to the outside, and he shouted irritatedly back, because my words were too loud and/or teasing. I came of course out right away to figure out what was going on – he was carrying a computer case out to the workshop to assemble something.
Yep – I hadn’t had that idiotic half-pill, I’d yelled at him unnecessarily (partly out of ignorance), and I was acting out of character, what with the level of medications in my body being misbalanced.
… Medications, especially psycoactive drugs, can be a very good tool, but they can very easily turn their face and attack in unexpected ways, and I’m very conscientious of being caring to my hubby. I don’t want to act ever, EVER like my mother during her marriage and the separation from my father, and it feels like pins and needles are the only things I can currently step on.
I’ve made an appointment with my local doctor early next week to make a plan on treatment and coming down from oxepax – it’s a short-term solution for a problem that is also taking care of itself, and I feel it’s rather like handling a time bomb.