La-la Land

Well, obviously the new dose is working. Good news, right? Well, I am more awake (which is, admittedly, pretty nice), but my former bad side effects are also putting in an appearance. I can't call my doctor until Monday, at which point I may end up on more Remeron. But for the weekend at least I'm stuck with no appetite, nausea in the morning until past lunch, and perhaps the most fun of all, anxiety. I hate being anxious for no reason. It's just annoying and makes life difficult in ways that life shouldn't be. I end up constantly tense and very shy and nervous, which sucks. But maybe my least favorite thing about anxiety is the effect it has on my sleep.

You would think that, having Narcolepsy, the last thing I would be worried about would be my ability to fall asleep. But Xyrem-induced anxiety actually makes it very difficult for me to fall asleep at night, and for the last four nights or so I've actually ended up staying awake thinking and being nauseated for most of the first of my three doses. The result is that I start losing even more sleep, so I end up more exhausted every day (even more than usual, that is) and totally zonked out. As a result, class has been especially challenging the past two afternoons. On Thursday I failed to eat enough lunch because I was nauseated and all food looked disgusting. I managed to force-feed myself half or so of a lunch, but then when I got to class I was shaky and unable to concentrate. I ended up leaving the room multiple times during the afternoon in order to force down enough rice crackers to avoid becoming completely non-functional. Even so, I only had an attention span for about one hour of four. I tried to focus on working on my project, but was about to fall over by the time I left. I turned up my music on the way home because I was worried about zoning out. Then it was straight to the couch, and I didn't even take my dog on a walk because I was too dead. And then of course I couldn't fall asleep again last night, so when I woke up this morning I knew I was pretty much screwed.

I had another four hour class today, and was only really there for an hour of it. After that it was a constant mental fight to pay attention. I seriously only got a little bit of the material into my head, and when I was supposed to be practicing in class I wound up staring blankly at my computer for minutes at a time. One of my fellow students kept asking me for help with things, and it took all of my mental effort to focus enough to formulate responses that vaguely made sense. By the end of class I was so glad to be out of there. Driving was difficult but I got an icee on my way home which helped a lot.

I'm hoping my doctor will get back with me early next week so I can do something about this. I'm not looking forward to my classes next week otherwise. This weekend's homework will be hard enough.