One of the joys...

One of the joys of having your autonomic nervous system out of whack is the constant adrenaline surges that allows you to function at a ridiculous pace for way too long.  The problem is that it can stay that way until you crash.  Adrenaline surges from what I can understand are a natural part of the condition but it is exacerbated by external stressors.  The body over responds to stress by placing itself in the flight or fight mode.

This past 2 weeks I have been riding the wave of an overdrive.  I worked 4 days in a row.  My last day of work I was up at 5 am and had to work all day and pick my mom up at the airport at midnight.  Instead her flight was delayed and we didn't get home till 230am.  I got a whopping 4 hours sleep before having an appointment and then coming home and spending the next 4 days packing and moving to a new apartment (No packing was done before hand because I literally was too tired).  When I woke up Monday am I found my new apartment was flooded and had to deal with that before work.  Tuesday was a day to take my mom and spoil her but I could tell I was in a crash mode.  When I crash, I crash.  Not much can get me going and that is extremely frustrating for me.  I am a go go kind of person.  I don't do well with down time but my body has forced me to give it down time.

Today after dropping my mom off at the airport I came home and made it as far as the couch.  There are boxes to unpack and things to do but I can't keep my eyes open.  The utter exhaustion is painful.  I have a sleep study coming up soon where they will monitor my sleep over night.  There are 2 thoughts that they have.  One is that my body is either in the light sleep mode or in the Deep REM mode but not cycling through the stages of sleep which is necessary for your body to renew itself and feel rested.  At work I do a sleep apnea study on all my new patients as part of a standard protocol.  As I was doing them the first few times, I realized that I answer very high on the risk factor scale for sleep apnea.  This brings me to the 2nd thought and reason for the sleep study.  It is not a typical sleep apnea where the airway is obstructed.  Instead it is the brain not telling the body to breath.  This is a condition called Central sleep apnea and is found in EDS patients.

The hardest part for me of everything I face is not the chronic pain, nor the issues with losing weight, or the many other problems you can face, rather it is the chronic exhaustion!  And unfortunately many of the meds that they are trying or planning to try to help me cause the exhaustion to be worse.  Even now I am so tired, I can barely proof read my writing to see if it makes any sense...so if it doesn't I am sorry.