My week has been bizarre. My energy seemed to wane throughout the week with each morning becoming more difficult. Yet, in the midst of that exhaustion, I managed to do some cleaning, to help out my team members by correcting our students’ quizzes and homework, and to get somethings done for a church group and [...]
Many of my colleagues at school subscribe to the following axiom, “Never make major life decisions in February.” The logic is fairly simple. As an educator (particularly in Minnesota), no month of the school year is more difficult than February. Cabin fever is settling in completely – both for adults and students – as your [...]
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 [...]
On the whole, today has been great, but as was the case on the way down to Tennessee, narcolepsy did choose some choice moments to rear its ugly head. In an attempt to create a smooth departure this morning, we all packed last night. Ironically, that effort paid off for us (those things usually backfire [...]
I chose not to push myself at all today. While I desperately want to be more productive, I knew after yesterday that I would be a fool to drive myself today. Thus, I got up slowly and thoroughly enjoyed the long “talk time” with my wife. It amazes me each week how wonderful it is [...]
Summer is always a curve and a blessing for me. I LOVE that I actually have “free time” because I need it to recover from the frenetic pace of my school year. At the same time, I hate it because I am terrible with unstructured time. I have been doing better this summer, but I [...]
I awoke today feeling like I had been run over by a car. There seems to be no definitive reason for this. I have not slept on any bathroom floors. I took both doses of Xyrem. I laid off exercising excessively for the last two days because I was feeling run down. Why in the [...]
The thought hit me today that I expend tremendous energy battling my narcolepsy each day. Motivating myself to get up, pushing myself to exercise, forcing myself to bear down on a specific task, and stretching myself to be attentive to others (particularly my wife and daughter) are all doubly draining elements of my day. I [...]
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 [...]
What a difference a day makes! I knew that I would pay a price for staying yesterday (and for not worrying about the energy that I was expending), but I had no idea that level, extent, or immediacy that the payback would affect my entire family. Narcolepsy reared its ugly head and brought along some [...]