Sleep vs. Eat

I'm still very sinus-infectionafied, hence the lack of blogging yesterday. The good news is that I somehow managed to turn in some homework and am now pretty much on track again, if I can get this week's work done on time. Which I think I can, thankfully. If I survived my first college experience, I can deal with this easily.

For one thing, my medication situation is vastly improved nowadays. When I was tackling my senior year at Carleton, I was faced with a very interesting dilemma. It's one of those ironic twists that's so unfortunate that it was actually really funny to me, even at the time. My dilemma was one of Sleep or Eat.

At the time I was on Xyrem (only Xyrem) for my narcolepsy, and it was very helpful for getting me sleep. It also took away my appetite completely and gave me anxiety problems. This was really bad for me because I was already borderline underweight from having Celiac disease for years, and my diet is so strict that I have to cook most of my own food- and I'm a pretty boring cook to start with. I'm also exhausted most of the time, and cooking is not something that I enjoy. So the result of all this was that I had to force-feed myself, because I had no appetite, and so I didn't eat near enough food every day because of the Xyrem side effects.

Because of all this, sleep and eat became pretty much mutually exclusive. I could take enough Xyrem to get some sleep, but that would leave me in a state of barely eating anything. Or I could take less Xyrem and have more nightmares and go back to living in a constant haze, but actually want food and be able to eat. I really did think it was pretty hilarious at the time. I mean, you can't make this shit up.

For most of a year I chose sleep, simply for survival reasons. I was determined to graduate and that was, I knew, the only way to do it. The result was that I lost weight dangerously- I was 95 pounds at my lowest weight, and for my body type I should be 110 at least. It was really scary, actually, because I could see bones where I really shouldn't. You could see my ribs without me sucking in my breath or anything, and my hip bone had way less padding than it was supposed to. As soon as I graduated I went back home and saw my neurologist, who immediately lowered my Xyrem while we figured things out. And then I had to opposite problem- I had my appetite back, but was so exhausted all the time that I couldn't really appreciate it. I was eating better but still not gaining weight. My neurologist wanted to put me on Provigil, because then I wouldn't need as much Xyrem (therefore lessening all the side effects) and could still be awake during the day. This sounded like the best plan ever, until I found out that Provigil isn't gluten-free.

Go figure. And it's not even the for sure kind of gluten-containing. It's the stupid, let's fill it with whatever is cheapest at the time kind- so a given pill is gluten-free or not, but there's no way to actually tell. My neurologist wanted me to just try it anyway, but my days of taking chances with gluten have long been over, and I convinced him that no, steadily worsening depression and exhaustion and pain issues were not "worth a try".

Then we started trying antidepressants, and once we found the right one (after some months of bad experimenting, including an allergic reaction- that was fun) life got much better, and I was finally allowed to both sleep and eat. As a bonus, I started gaining weight back, and still am. I'm now proudly in the triple digits once again at 103 pounds. Woohoo! And I've filled out nicely, if I do say so myself. My appetite is huge again, and this makes the need to constantly cook infinitely easier to deal with. I have a feeling I have a few more pounds in my future.

At least, with all that I've had to deal with, I'll never take this stuff for granted.