Studying Sleep

Two more nights until my sleep study! And it is officially approved by insurance (took until Tuesday), so it is set. I am sure it will still cost an arm and a leg, but it is worth it.

I am going to upload a picture of my sleep diary. Now I knew that I have been struggling with sleep, but wow, adding up the hours just now made a big impact on me.

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OK, the picture is bad. I don't feel like getting up to turn on the lights, and the flash of the camera made a glare. The hours of the day are across the top. I make vertical lines for sleep/wake, diagonal lines for lying in bed awake, and shading for sleep. On the right side, I recorded the total hours I slept and the number of awakenings (not counting last awakening for morning). Ignore the top line, because I took Ambien CR that night.

Yeah, so 6:30 is better than 2:45, but it is still not functional for a person with MS. For me! That one day I got 8 hours of sleep, but it was still broken up. Not good. Also, I cannot sleep until 8:45 on a work day, so I would not normally have been able to get that much sleep. My alarm usually would go off at 7:00/7:30.

In related news, I am off tramadol as of today. My sleep specialist speculated that it could affect my sleep, being an opioid. (Despite me being on such a low dose that I had to cut the smallest pill on the market in half.) I have been stepping down slowly, and I had no trouble coming off it. I would say that my nerve pain in my left leg/buttock has been worse, but I will give it some time. The sleep specialist said that I would know whether the tramadol was affecting my sleep within three or four days.

Not related but totally awesome: The increased Trileptal has taken care of my trigeminal nerve pain! When I saw my neurologist on Tuesday, he increased it to three times daily. I am only taking 150 mg, which is not a lot. Dr. Rick was ready to increase from 150 mg 2x daily to 300 mg 2x daily, but I asked for the smaller increase. I can always increase more if needed.

Today was rough, which should not be surprising if you look at the sleep I got last night. But I had great days yesterday (Thanksgiving) and the day before--despite doing quite a bit of cooking. My pain has been down, and my fatigue, while not allowing me to live close to the way I did before, has been much better. I am able to sit up through most of the evening.

Tonight I am really trying to stay up until my eyes are closing, like I did yesterday. Which turned out to be 10:30. Whatever. It is so hard to stay up. It means fighting your body's need for sleep until you lose the battle. What makes it so hard is that the pain increased as the night wears on... agh...