Sleeping, or not sleeping, and adapting.......

So I think last post was one of splendid peace of mind. Yes, that was it. Acceptance. But that doesn't preclude needing a sort of reality check. So if I'm so peaceful about dealing with Parkinson's then why don't I sleep like a baby?

I've kept a diary over the past several weeks about what it's like to sleep. Last night it was awake about every hour or two for the majority of the night. It's sort of work to try to sleep.  You keep your schedule of meds as close as possible to no variation at all, but there are times you get off for one reason or another. And then, as you look back on a certain week or month you are really aware of how stress affects your sleep. Like the Month of the Car, in which    out of 4 vehicles parked at our house, only one was running right and that one took a $100 battery just out of the blue. The next month followed with repair bills and the  purchase of a newer model car that we really didn't want to do before next year but pre-empted the catastrophic breakdown we knew was coming with >250 K on the old Sentra. So a hard month, admittedly.  Two or three times this month I've been wide  awake all night, followed by a day or two of just wasted effort in getting through the next day, and another night of fitful sleep as my body settles down.

I've come to accept that a good day has two sort of short naps in it and then the night is less restless. So I don't plan on doing much. The presence of clutter has prompted me to pull everything from my crafting days from my office and label it to be put in a garage sale in the near future. I don't want it anymore, that and a thousand other things that feel like a bag of stones tied around my neck that will cause me to drown if I stumble and fall in the water. I want simplicity, but it is complicated to get rid of all the stuff. I've shredded countless bags of paper only to see more of it that appears to grow while I'm not looking in back corners. It would seem there would be an end to it, as I purge and get rid of old files from years ago. There has to be a point at which it is all gone. But not for now. In the garage are several bank boxes with something in them that I once thought I should keep "just in case" .

The trouble is that to sort through anything requires focus and attention. So, I get up and have a bowl of cereal in the morning, made with soy milk to avoid milk proteins that are intolerable for my system. Then it's time for morning meds. And then it's time to make my spouse's lunch before he goes to work and I for a walk or to the gym. Yes, now I can walk, after all the work with the BIG program. A 3/4 mile walk on the sidewalk will render my right ankle painful and  uncomfortable, but it gets better if I persist with the motion so I just do it till I can't bear the discomfort anymore and call it a "good" walk.  The gym is preferable but they recently refinished the ball courts and the chemicals should be enough to kill off what little substantia negra I have left.

The gym provides a complete workout and a suspended wooden track that prevents the pressure on knees and ankles that the sidewalk causes. So I'm going back this week hoping to find it is at last aired out enough to tolerate it. There are stretches and strengthening exercises to do, then the core exercises and balances exercises, followed by a walk around the track. By then it is about 10 30 and time to  go home for a shower.
Then I walk out and blink at the office. I am getting pretty sleepy; the meds will have peaked now and I will be sleepy, groggy, and need a little nap. After the nap I'll put on some wash , and then come back to look at the office.  Depending on the night's sleep,  I might be able to work for an hour or two before having a bowl  of tuna salad and a drink of water. This is my routine.  By that time it is about 1:30 and I need to take the next dose of carbolevadopa. So I do.

I turn on the news or check my email. I'm trying to sell off the china from my failed antique booth "business" that followed the attempt to make greeting cards, also sold at the booth that morphed into an art deco 20's and 30's china booth that no one in this area really appreciated. I need to live in Wales. But I don't want to do the bookkeeping for any business at all. It makes me stressed and crazy. I just want to get 1/4 of the $ I put into the stuff back, just for the principal of it.

But where was I... Ah,  yes, cleaning out the office.  I've bought boxes just the right size for a small file of 8 1/2 x 11 sheets to fit in, and nice and neat. I can label them with what's inside and keep organized that way. That will work only if I purge the old paper. I'm trying, I'm trying.  I pull out all the junk from making greeting cards. And I sort through another box, emptying more and more.  Where do these other boxes come from, I wonder. 22+ years in this house alone. Or not alone. With 5 kids and a spouse and several pets. That's where. That reminds me, I will need to go through the pet folder someday and  purge all the files on the pets we have outlived.

It's time for the afternoon nap. I can barely keep my eyes open. I sleep from 330 to 4 and wake feeling tireder than when I went to bed.  Why is that, I wonder, but once up and breathing in oxygen deeply it is better, so am able to think it is time to start some supper. If needed it's time to go to the store, so away to pick up fresh fruit or vegetables. Then home for supper.

At night I watch NCIS reruns with my hubby, our one vice, but never any action or spy movies that aren't comedies before bed.   Then it is time to go to bed and do this all over again.  In a month or so I think I will be done going though the paper and maybe then can do what I've always wanted to do: family history. Right now just concentrating on getting there.