As yapped about previously, the resurrection performed by my CPAP therapy was a wonder. Oxygen levels went up to 96% while sleeping and I was anticipating all sorts of living when it was found that the blood pressure med I was on was doing nothing but creating scary sausage feet so swollen that shoes became an option. So, a different sort was prescribed and since taking it I have become loopier, sleepier, and stoopider than ever.
Last weekend, my cousin had a party for her now twenty-one year old daughter. She lives in West Seneca, New York in a home that I have been to many, many times. I got to the street and could not recognize her house; walked up and down a few times past driveways full of cars until I saw her pool in one of the backyards. I called the doctor.
She lowered the dosage by half, and I am breaking tablets into quarters but lord almighty this med curtails my life. I can't walk to the car without staggering, memory is laughable, and it feels like I am wading through a deep pool, forcing arms and legs to move. I look up the side effects of this ACE-inhibitor, and hear a brown spotted snake who lives in a drawer on some laboratory farm, laughing.
This med is based on the venom of a South American pit viper, the jararaca, who eats small mammals and birds and is responsible for 52% of snake bites in Brazil. It can cause death and the little red spots now on the bottom of my lower legs, and I am being slowly poisoned. I can't tell you how grateful I am for the sleep apnea diagnosis, but the end of medicine that throws pills at you is an industry little better than dry-clean only designer clothing. Trendy, but hell for the consumer.
The doctor said that because it has lowered blood pressure to acceptable levels, my body has to adjust to not getting enough blood up to my brain. I have lots of weight to lose, yes it's got a great deal to do with the thyroid stuff and the antidepressant stuff, but I worry that soon, like maybe tomorrow, that I will not know where I am and be found wandering in neighborhoods seen in the movies. This is so discouraging after getting good results with the sleep studies.
I am still young enough to have a busy life, to contribute to whatever we call real. I hate this stalling, this waiting for a solution, this arise and go sit on the couch because walking is a series of acrobatics, the depression exacerbated by the constrained flow to the brain. I stopped the antidepressants over a month ago with fingers crossed; the sadnesses have begun, but I am chalking those up to another mentioned side effect of this pill. Usually by seven or eight at night energy returns, I am again guessing, because the dose of medication is waning.
I looked up an acupuncturist today. How could it hurt the situation? I have two honored, intelligent friends who benefited from this science, and I myself completed an introductory college course in Alternative Medicine. I can't sit still and watch my life dissolve into this continuous crumbling wreck.
Bed has become a season of normalcy from dusk to dawn, an orange sun descends, a pink one arises. In between, the dreams have again become forgettable, but they are there. Awakening in the dark happens only once or twice, and usually there is a guardian cat next to me as the machine hisses life into spaces unseen. My legs try to run, so night-anchors are tied to my feet in the form of folates and magnesium. When sleep comes, it is like falling back into a lap, aproned and enduring, with memories of a hand from long ago smoothing away bits of the storm into nothingness.
Sleep then, lay down among purple winds that run light silhouettes upon cheeks and eyelids; lay safe under the cover of the night skies that hum with the soft flutter of moths and wingy bats. Hum with the shushing of leaves on branches, with night frogs calling and crickets a-trill. It is all a dance, a forever dance extending through decades, centuries, ages. I'll be fine. So be us all. Sleep well.
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