I have had a problem for the past few months that I really haven't shared with many people. I've lost my mind. Seriously. It started last spring right before I had surgery. I showed up for work and the sub said, "What are you doing here?" I replied, "I work here...Why are you here?" She said, "I'm here because you have a doctor's appointment today." From then on, the teachers on duty in the parking lot gave me some lighthearted ribbing every day when I pulled in to work. "Are you sure you're supposed to be here today," they would ask...But what started out sort of funny has turned into madness. I had trouble reading the maps when we went to Disney World and Addison and I got caught in a TERRIBLE storm that scared him to death because I couldn't find my way out of Epcot. Since school has started this year, things have gotten much worse. I can't call my students' names as quickly as I'd like. I pass out blank tests. (Seriously- I passed out a test that said, "Name the notes on the staff below." And there were no notes drawn on the test. Geez.) I confuse letters when I type. I send emails and post facebook statuses with misspelled words. I get lost going down the road and can't remember where I am or how to get to where I am going. Yesterday, a student looked at me and said, "My name isn't Noah." I honestly don't remember calling him Noah, but apparently I did. It has become absolutely frustrating and scary. I thought that I seriously could have a brain tumor or something awful like that.
So...hoping that the problem could be hormonal, I went for my yearly physical and mentioned it to my doctor. She said that she hates people blaming everything on hormones today and said, that , yes, it could be hormones, but it could also be caused by something simple, like a food allergy. She suggested I see a Rheumatologist. So I did. He did about $1200 worth of blood work and found nothing. He suggested a sleep study, saying that many people's problems like this are caused by a lack of good sleep, and then he said the scariest sentence I've ever heard. "This could be the beginnings of MS or early Dementia, so I think you need to see a Neurologist." Being a person of faith, I decided, after my heart started beating again, that I was not going to claim anything terrible like that until it was actually diagnosed. Next step, sleep study.
I went to the sleep study and it was a miserable failure. I didn't sleep until about 1:00 am and then they woke me up at 4:30. I hated all the wires hooked up to me and it TOTALLY creeped me out that people were staring at me while I slept. I've never been so exhausted in my life. The next day, my car died and I had to spend the hours in a car dealership instead of resting. Uugh. I still don't think I've caught up on my sleep from that night. It was a miserable experience!
I went to the doctor this past Friday to get the results of the sleep study, though I knew that I didn't sleep well. This was a new doctor that I'd never seen before. He told me that yes, the sleep study results were terrible, but that they symptoms I am describing are bigger than just a lack of sleep. He pushed a red button and the nurse came in. He said, "Call Dr. so and so's office and let's get this patient some psychological and neurological testing as soon as possible." Uugh. Now two doctors have suspected that I could have something terrible. Not the news you want to get when you have a football game that night and a contest the next day. He also said that because I wasn't sleeping well he would call me in a sleeping pill.
Skip to Tuesday- I still had not gotten the prescription for the sleeping pill called in to the pharmacy and I still didn't have the referral for the other tests. Thinking that I didn't like this new doctor, I called my regular doctor to see if he would be willing to read the results of the sleep study. I was able to see him that afternoon.
When I told him everything that had been going on and how I felt like I was on a merry-go-round being passed from doctor to doctor to doctor, he put the chart down and said, "Do you realize that in the three hours you slept, you woke up 45 times?" DO WHAT? I read it for myself. Yep. I woke up 45 times in three hours. My sleep efficiency was 58% and my REM sleep, (that good, restful, dreamy sleep) was only 8%. Then he said the most reassuring thing I've heard in a long time. He put my chart down and looked at me and said in the kindest way, "When I am on call at the hospital for 30 hours at a time, I feel grumpy, forgetful and scatterbrained. I work for ONE NIGHT at a time. You have been doing that for months. You don't have anything terrible. Your brain just never stops." What a relief. He wrote me a prescription for a sleeping pill that is designed to put people to sleep fast and prevent waking in the night. I slept better last night, but I'm sure it will take a few days for me to really feel the full effects of it.
You need to understand as you read this, that what I am summing up in a few paragraphs has been happening EVERY DAY for MONTHS. I was so SICK of making mistakes- looking at kids on the band field and wanting to tell them to slide over a bit, but not being able to call their names. If it just happened occasionally, maybe I would have dealt with it better, but this was a daily disaster for me. I'm not sure that I'm putting in to words exactly how much this bothered me. In the back of my mind, I maybe feared slightly that the doctors were right, but I tried to not act like they were right because I didn't have a diagnosis of anything awful. Mainly, I just wanted it to go AWAY. To hear that it was most likely something simple, like a sleep problem, was music to my ears!
The Bible says in Philippians, "Do not worry about anything, but instead with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God." It goes on to say, "Whatever is TRUE, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything praiseworthy, think about these things." I believe that God takes care of His people and I knew the entire time that He would work this out. I mentioned it to a few close friends and family, but I told them that "I wasn't going to claim anything terrible until it was actually diagnosed." It is comforting to know that we don't have to worry about anything...and if we will fill our minds with ONLY what is true, we'll put a lot more life in our days. So often we think about what COULD be or what MIGHT be and forget about the things that ARE true. I am going to spend my days really trying to think about the things that I KNOW are right and hopefully, my brain will begin to shut off at night. Rest is truly good for the soul....and the mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment