Tag Archives: Fatigue

The chronically fatigued insomniac

I AM that oxymoron: the chronically fatigued insomniac.

One thing, which I know would probably make me healthier and feel better, would be for me to go to bed at a decent hour. Not to mention I have heard rumors that a solid 8-9 hours of sleep helps prevent you from aging. Being as that I am hitting the half way mark between 30 and 40 in January, and I am beginning to see gravity and life slowly affect my outward appearance. Also, my inner soul is starting to tire.

I have always been a night-owl, but my youth and graduate studies tended to keep me from needing more than 4-6 hours of sleep a night. I did fine with nights of no or little sleep before the age of 25, and then it rolled over to having two boys in a span of 20 months, which precipitated the “lack of sleep” issue. Again, I did ok with that.

And now, I have two darling boys that go to bed without complaints at 8pm, no questions asked. I truly am lucky and blessed that they welcome bedtime as easily as they do. I wonder if when this perfection will end.

I, however, stay up for hours after they’ve gone to bed. Sometimes I am doing useful things, like getting clothes ready for the next day of school, making lunches, loading the dishwasher, and folding a load of laundry. Often though I get sucked into my DVR that I only watch at night because my boys, including my husband, are soundly asleep in bed and they really have no interest in watching Project Runway or Top Chef.

My question is if anyone out there sets a curfew for themselves?

I am usually asleep by 1am. Everyday when I wake up exhausted from lack of sleep, I tell myself that I will go to bed earlier today, and I never do. The few times I have tried, I have failed miserably. I lay in bed wide awake with my mind racing a million miles a minute. I am on a first name basis with Melatonin and Ambien right now.

MS is a funny (as in perplexing) disease. It’s as though I cannot fall asleep at night, then I wake up exhausted in the morning, trudge through the day like a zombie, have to sit down every few minutes because my body fatigues so easily, then cannot fall asleep to take a nap when given the opportunity, and am so fatigued until the cycle repeats itself.

Welcome back SAHMhood

I officially have more time now to do my most important job, which is be a mom.

I have more time to cook, clean, play with my kids, take them places, take more pictures of them, volunteer at school, eBay things I don’t need or use anymore… AND I have more time to blog! – the list can go on and on. I am going to be a good stay-at-home mom again. And not only that, I intend on being a FUN mom. But although I have all this time, my body doesn’t play nice and tells me to reel it in. I have all these great ideas and intentions of fulfilling them, but I’m limited by… well, everything right now.

I just started my new medication, and it will be one week tomorrow. No real change as of yet, but some new symptoms coming on as a result of me trying to do too much. By the end of the day I am done, finshed, caput. I just want to try and catch up on life. And I will. I have to.

I remember this SAHM gig when my boys were little – and now I remember how much I loved it!

MS to 5K?

I’d give anything to run again. Not that I was a runner… ever… but I was able to run once a long time ago.  I also used to dance and workout regularly.

Now, I just want to be able to even speed walk without limping.  I have good days and bad.  My good days are awesome and I can jog a little.  I even started participating in Zumba classes on Mondays, where I last about 15-20 minutes before my left leg starts to give out.  But then I have bad days sometimes where I am limping after just a few minutes of walking.  I am wondering if I should just keep pushing through these “bad” days and just keep walking (or limping) my way to running a 5K one day.  I mean, you’d think that if I’d keep up with it that eventually my left leg would play nice and get strong enough to allow me to be as active as I want to be.

MS to 5K, or rather Couch to 5K, seems to be something that’s been running (pun totally intended) through my head lately.