Thursday, November 01, 2007

Brand New Day

It's official - I have Narcolepsy. My two day sleep study results showed that I did not have excessive sleep apnea (no more than 8 per hour), I did show that I feel asleep almost immediately. In fact, the nap study (every two hours they let me take a twenty minute nap) showed that I fell asleep within two minutes EACH time. I knew I fell asleep, but that's fast! I'm so excited to have an actual reason for being so tired all the time. The doctor prescribed PROVIGIL which I'll start tomorrow morning.

One of the descriptions my doctor gave me of narcolepsy is that it's like a faulty dimmer switch in your brain between the wake state and the asleep state and it just doesn't regulate successfully between the two states. This made perfect sense to me!

So now I'm going to set up one more show for the kids to watch while I lay down for a short nap.

5 comments:

Domestic Goddess said...

WOW!
I'm glad you finally got to the bottom of it! I am excited for you and hope the meds work. When my father suffered from it he also had apnea and hypoventilation, where he did not expel CO2 at all. Hence his reason for narcolepsy. I am glad they figured it out before it got much worse. It can be a terrible thing.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry that you have to have any problems at all, but at least you have a diagnosis and there is treatment. I'm anxious to hear how it works. Keep us posted.

Unknown said...

So glad you have the answer! Hope the treatment works well.

Happy said...

Good luck w/Provigil. You'll have to let us know if you see a difference. I know I did...a HUGE difference!! I know whenever I have gotten a diagnosis it is a relief to finally KNOW what the problem is. (Even if the news is bad.)

2Forgetful said...

I'm so glad you finally have a diagnosis. Good luck with the meds.