Sadly, I am writing well past my bed time, yet again. That said, I am handling things decently. Over the last few years, I have struggled mightily when I have gone back to work after longer breaks. Regularly, my expectations are far too high. Needless to say, I worried that returning to school after not [...]
It is late, and I need to sleep, but I needed to report that my med holiday seems to have helped some. I took my amphetamine today for the first time since the morning of December 30. While I did not feel a significant improvement in its effectiveness, I do think that I was more [...]
One of the hardest aspects of a medication holiday is the fact that even when I feel coherent, I find it impossible to focus in any meaningful way. Although I was out for three different one to two hour blocks today, I also had more energy when I was awake. Yet, even with those moments [...]
I arrived safe and sound (other than my ridiculous sinuses continuing to produce infected mucus) at the Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport about 4:30 PM CDT. I hope my live blogging from the last session that I saw (Dr. Faraco) captures how cool I think her and Dr. Mignot’s research is. After that ended, though, my life [...]
After doing a decent job of live blogging at Dr. Naiman’s session, I failed miserably at doing it at any other session. While I hope to do it again tomorrow, I have no regrets about my inability to live blog a second session today. Instead, I had marvelous conversations with a number of individuals. I [...]
Invariably, I was tired enough last night that I managed to “miss” my second dose at 2 AM. I did take it at 3 AM , but between that and my overexertion yesterday, I did not drag myself out of bed until 9:05 AM – after the first session started. Apparently, Dr. Rye of Emory [...]
I have only been to two Narcolepsy Network national conferences, but the opening fun tonight BLEW AWAY last year’s Friday night. The planning committee had conceived of the idea that we should have a sing-a-long with “re-writes” of songs, making popular tunes have lyrics about narcolepsy. I had glanced at them only a little before [...]
Occasionally, I get horrid sinus headaches. Often, they come in waves – I will be fine for months and then bang, they are back. Thus, today made me a tad nervous. I have essentially had a fairly strong one all day. Offsetting my concern, though, is the fact that my wife and I were out [...]
One of the best (and weirdest) drugs for most people with narcolepsy is Xyrem (zi-rem). We take the drug at night to allow us a much more restful sleep. It seems odd that a person with narcolepsy would need a drug to sleep well, but the reality is that we are chronically sleepy because we [...]
I survived. In fact, I thrilled to a large extent. MITY wrapped up wonderfully. In many ways, my co-teacher and I were more on top of things this year than we have ever been. I truly believe that our class gave a tremendous reading. Each student delivered her or his best reading at the actual [...]