After seeing a non-maternity version of this shirt on Pinterest (without the arrow, obviously), I could not resist making what I have decided is CLEARLY the best maternity shirt of all time. 80s reference + dance movie reference + maternity pun = WIN.
I wonder if the baby will grow up to be as easily amused as me?
Dear small, downtown grocery store,
I understand that as a smallish grocery store smack in the middle of down-town Chicago that you can't carry every product I could ever need or want. Real estate is expensive and you only have so much space. However, maybe if you cut down on the dried-bean soup mix collection you would be able to stock one damn bag of dried lentils.
Sincerely,
Anne
So, how was your week? Me? Oh, I just got diagnosed with narcolepsy. No big.
(OMGWTFBBQ!)
So that happened. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (or know me in real life), you already know that I went in and had a 24 hour sleep study a few weeks ago. I had both the overnight (polysomnogram) and daytime (multiple sleep latency test) studies.
You should have seen the FULL set of wires I had overnight, but I couldn't get to my phone to take a picture of them, so you only get the reduced set of wires for a visual.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, some background: I've never been a terribly good sleeper at night. I supplement with naps pretty much every day that I'm not at work, and I always have. I remember often taking naps after school even in middle/high school. Daytime sleepiness is just something that always was, and I mostly attributed it to the fact that I'm genetically unable to sleep through the night and generally wake well before my alarm for no good reason. It runs in my family - my mom and maternal grandma were always poor sleepers, too, though they can maybe also blame their coffee habits to some degree. In my lower-self-esteem moments I attributed my tiredness to me being lazy.
But this year something snapped and the sleepiness I have always dealt with sort of took over my life. I'm always exhausted around April 15th (and for a few weeks following), but this year I didn't bounce back to a "normal" level of tired like I usually do. I was still painfully tired well into the summer. A few times in July I either left work to go home and nap or took a nap in our office "comfort room" or on my office floor to take the edge off. I was so tired it was painful. On weekend days (or vacation days) I would most often end up taking not one but TWO naps, in addition to a relatively normal 7-8 hours of sleep at night. After talking to my regular doctor and my endocrinologist, having my thyroid, iron, and vitamin D levels checked, I scheduled a sleep study per their suggestion.
I met with the sleep doctor and gave her my general background/health health history, and she scheduled the nighttime and daytime sleep tests for me. She said at the time that she didn't think I had sleep apnea/any of the more common sleep problems and did suggest that narcolepsy was a possibility, but I never took that too seriously. I've never once collapsed or fallen dead asleep while crossing the street/eating dinner/etc, so CLEARLY that was just silly. I joked about it for weeks. Narcolepsy! Can you believe it? Ha, ha...ha?
The polysomnogram test involved sleeping with roughly twice the number of wires pictured above stuck to my person, along with straps across my chest (measuring breathing effort), wires on my legs (measuring for restless leg syndrome), EKG pads on my chest, an oxygen-measuring tube thing in my nose (measuring the air coming out, not blowing oxygen in), a tiny microphone pasted to my cheek, an oxygen and pulse sensor on my finger, etc. It was not overly comfortable at first, but I did manage a full 7.5 hours of sleep. The results of the overnight sleep study were as follows:
1. I do not have sleep apnea. Yay!
2. I wake up more often than I realize, but it isn't from lack of breathing like with sleep apnea.
3. I have a lot more REM than normal.
4. I fall asleep astonishingly quickly, even with 100 wires stuck to my person.
Together all that meant was that it was a good thing we had the multiple sleep latency test scheduled for the day, because they needed more data. Had they found sleep apnea or something else that could explain the excessive sleepiness, they would have ended the test here.
The second part of the test, they daytime part, required a reduced set of wires as pictured above, plus the EKG pads. All the rest came off, thank goodness. I was required to take five 20 minute naps, one every two hours, starting two hours after waking for the day. So after waking at 6pm I had scheduled naps at 8am, 10am, 12pm, 2pm, and 4pm. Between I played on my iPad and read. For each nap I was given 20 minutes to try to fall asleep. If I didn't fall asleep within 20 minutes they would end the nap there. If I did fall asleep, they would wake me 15 minutes after falling asleep.
Because I am ME I was watching the clock and knew that each one of my naps was terminated roughly 20 minutes after it started, so I assumed I was failing at sleeping and wasting everyones time. I reported at the time that I thought I fell asleep in naps 4 and 5, maybe, but I wasn't sure. I reported "vivid daydreaming like dreaming", which is why I thought I might have been asleep, but I wasn't entirely sure (I thought I might have been dreaming while awake, which happens). The actual results were as follows:
1. I did not fall asleep in nap one, which was no surprise. I was trying too hard and was really anxious. I'm told that is pretty common.
2. I DID fall asleep in ALL of the remaining naps, in as little as 90 seconds. My average time to fall asleep, for naps scheduled every two hours, on a day following a full night of sleep was FOUR MINUTES. Woah. This was very high on the "daytime sleepiness" scale.
So, those results, combined with my self-reported "early-waking" brand of insomnia, a life-long affinity for naps, etc. resulted in the doctor coming to the conclusion of narcolepsy with bonus insomnia.
What it means: No, I'm not likely going to start falling face-first into my mashed potatoes at the dinner table, dead-asleep. The often comically portrayed fainting style of narcolepsy (cataplexy) is present in only about 2/3rds of people with narcolepsy. The other three major symptoms - sleep paralisis (waking up and feeling paralyzed for a few seconds), hallucinations/crazy vivid dreams while falling asleep, and excessive daytime sleepiness are all present for me to some degree. The excessive daytime sleepiness is my biggest problem. The sleep paralysis has only happened to me a few times and isn't severe at all, and doesn't interfere with anything. Oddly I knew what it was from a television show so it didn't/doesn't freak me out. And the hallucinations/crazy vivid dreams are amusing and entertaining far more often than they are scary/nightmares; I actually kind of like them.
For treatment we are doing two things - medications (stimulants) and sleep-specific cognitive behavioral therapy. I started the first attempt at a stimulant medication (Nuvigil) yesterday and I felt pretty darn good. I didn't get sleepy at all until near 5pm, and that was only slightly. I was alert and able to focus all day, which was spectacular. I joked that I was pretty sure I could see through walls on this drug, but really simply not being dead-on-my-feet-tired feels like a superpower to me.
Unfortunately I was also awake (FOR THE DAY) at 1:15 this morning, so there is still some adjusting to do. But I'm hopeful that since I at least felt good during the day that there is an answer that doesn't involve me needing to rent an apartment near my office for daily afternoon naps. The sleep-specific cognitive behavioral therapy we will schedule when I go in for a follow-up in two weeks. I don't know much about that yet, other than I am all for trying any non-medication treatment they can come up with.
So! That's where I'm at. Mostly I'm just happy to have an answer that isn't "you're lazy, get over it" which was my biggest fear.
This has already gotten incredibly long-winded, but perhaps I missed something. Feel free to ask any questions you have in the comments. I've never known anyone with narcolepsy (that I'm aware of), and it is a curious condition. Ask away.
STEP ONE: Get a college degree in something business-y, and then a related job in business-land where you are required to dress at least "business casual".
STEP TWO: Be very good at your job and get promoted to a level where you are client-facing and doing sales and bringing in business and other important business-y things.
STEP THREE: Show up to work on St. Patrick's Day looking like this:
Come on, you know they are fake clip-ins.
I love St. Patrick's Day. I don't do much to celebrate other than wear green (since I don't like Irish foods like corned beef), but I do enjoy showing my Irish Pride via my clothing and hair. With a name like Anne Fisher I might not sound like I have a lot of Irish in me, but you only have to go up one generation to my mom and her siblings (Michael, Kathleen, Colleen, and Maureen) to find the Irish names. And I have green eyes! That has to count for something.
But even with green hair (for the day), I hardly stand out in a city that does this to their river every March.
The normal shade of green isn't quite this bright.
The Packers won the Superbowl and my city is covered in more snow than is at all reasonable, and yet the only thing I feel like posting is a set of pictures my Dad emailed to me. Below is me, ages 15 and 2, doing what I do best - entertaining my parents. I can only assume the giant face-hicky I got from doing this is blocked from my memory for a good reason.
Super Bowl Face(s)!!
For the last few days I have been following a particularly frustrating diet called dental work and a summer cold. I cannot begin to describe how much more delightful an utter lack of taste makes a mussy-soft-food diet. I'm sure you're all jealous. At first my wife was awesome. She went to the store, she cooked mushy-soft food for me to eat, and she put up with my never-ending WOE IS ME monologue. Awesome, right? Up until yesterday afternoon I would have agreed with you. But last night my loving wife first tried to kill me, then called me a fascist* (as implied by the title of this post). (Everything I know about foreshadowing I learned from daytime television, natch.)
I have always had a lot of food quirks. While I'll try anything once or twice or seven times, there are many perfectly normal foods I just cannot deal with, have given up on, won't touch, don't want anywhere near me. One of those foods is macaroni and cheese.
I know. I'll pause and let you all finish flailing at your screens now.
It isn't just that I don't like it. I Can't Have Anything To Do With It. Last night my wife (WHO KNOWS HOW I FEEL ABOUT MACARONI AND CHEESE) thought it would be a good idea to make some for me for dinner. Because it is mushy and inhale-able and totally exactly what she would eat if she were on the dental work and a summer cold diet. Logic!
In the least gross terms possible, I'll just say that the gagging and heaving and throwing-up-in-my-mouth (AND SWALLOWING IT AGAIN) and more gagging that followed the one bite I managed to coach myself into taking taught her a valuable lesson about How Not To Challenge Anne's Food Issues. She may have subsequently taken to the Internet to call me a fascist, but she learned an important lesson. I think that may be the first time I won an argument by vomiting.
Macaroni and cheese is pretty much the last cheese-food that will get that reaction out of me, but it used to be ALL cheese. And I am originally from Wisconsin. I'm surprised they didn't throw me out of the state. For those of you who have not been to Wisconsin, we are so All About Cheese up here that we create stores like this:
(Photo credit: every "funny sign" website on the Internet)
(There is truly a "Wisconsin's Finest Taxidermy and Cheese" store not far from my parents' house. No joke. I pass the sign every time I drive to their house.)
I know it is terrible cliche to blame one's troubles on one's parents, but this is all totally my mom's fault. If you asked her, she would even agree with me. Gleefully.
Taxidermy and Cheese stores aside, there really are cheese stores in every town in Wisconsin, and it is not at all that uncommon to buy most of your cheese from one of them vs. from the grocery store. While this may sound all well-and-good to cheese lovers out there, there is the minor fact that cheese stores stink to HIGH HEAVEN and strong odors (pleasant or unpleasant) have always triggered my gag-reflex like nothing else. So when I was a kid in small-town Wisconsin and my mom needed to stop at the cheese store, did she leave me in the car? At home? No. And not because she thought I would steal the car or get snagged by a stranger. She brought me into the store with her purely because she thought it was hilarious to watch me gag over the smell the whole time we were in the store. She admitted a few years ago that not only was she doing it on purpose, she started going to the cheese store more often because it amused her so. (Everything I know about schadenfreude I learned from my mom.)
I've gotten over the worst of my cheese-aversion, though I still won't it eat just a plain hunk of cheese. And since I do the majority of the cooking in our household we very rarely have macaroni and cheese in the house at all. So at almost 30 I am FINALLY (mostly) free of the cheese-fear that my mom planted in me. Huzzah!
How much do you want to bet that when we have kids my mom makes sure cheese is their favorite food, ensuring that I'll be forever surrounded by little blue boxes of macaroni and cheese? (I'm doomed.)
