Sleep study, and general ADD update #Life #ooo pretty

So I went in for a sleep study, a week ago Friday. (Boy, I'm behind in my blogging, aren't I?)

It was an interesting experience. I counted 22 different wires taped, and in some cases glued, to different parts of my body (mostly my head — that's where they used the glue). Then they expected me to go to sleep, in a strange bed — and then got me up at 5:30 the next morning (eek!).

Oddly enough, even though I lay wide awake for an hour and a half before I finally fell asleep, and even though I therefore only got about five hours of sleep, I woke up fairly refreshed and alert. It was some of the best sleep I'd had in a while. File that away under "peculiar".

I learned some stuff from talking to the sleep doctor, the morning before the sleep study. Like, the allergy meds my family doctor had given me samples of (Alavert-D — basically loratadine (Claritin/Alavert) plus pseudoephedrine) would keep me awake at night; the loratadine by itself will neither keep you awake nor put you to sleep, but pseudoephedrine will keep you awake. She recommended that I try taking the Alavert-D in the morning, and Benadryl before bedtime; Benadryl is both a more potent anti-allergy thing, but also pretty good for helping you sleep. (My psychologist looked it up, and decided to have me keep taking Benadryl at night for a while, instead of the lithium. We'll see how it goes.)

I had to fill out a sleep log for a full week before I went in for the sleep study, and found that I wasn't getting as much sleep as I thought; I had thought I was getting around 7 hours a night, but it was actually closer to 6. So lately, between Benadryl at night and my 11:00 bedtime (which I'm currently half an hour past — bad me), I've actually been getting a little better-rested, I hope.

Still got a ways to go. My ADD has an amalgam of causes, I think. Lack of sleep certainly plays into it. So does dehydration; I can't focus when I get dehydrated, and my body simply doesn't fire the "thirsty" signal like it did when I was a kid. I've been trying to drink much larger quantities of water, and have almost entirely cut caffeine, except when I get jitters coming off the dextroamphetamine. I've been trying (most weekdays, at least) to take the dextro every morning; if I take more than one a day (or if I'm late eating lunch), I get jittery later, so I'm trying to get into a regular routine before I add an afternoon dose.

I haven't been to the gym in about a month, and haven't gotten my bike out either. Bad me. I'll darn well get some exercise tomorrow, though. CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans) put on a May Day celebration yesterday at First Church, and the youth group gave a pancake breakfast, which I helped with. As entertainment, CUUPS had some "Morris Dancers". It was quite cool, and at the end, they commented that they're recruiting... so I'll be giving that a shot. Don't be surprised if you hear I got trucked to the emergency room for exhaustion.

The other big challenge at this point is my glasses; it's another month before we start a new year on our flex plan and I can get new everyday glasses (small change; once again, my eyes have actually gotten better) and new computer glasses (big change — I don't have a separate pair of computer glasses right now). I think eyestrain is really wearing me out by the end of the day, and I'm looking forward to getting that taken care of, so I can see how much the other stuff really is helping.