Good morning Miss Mary Sunshine.
I barely slept all last week, maybe 4 hours a night tops. None of it restful. One night I kicked Mr. Wonderful and flung my pillow across the room because I was so pissed off that he could peacefully snore (loudly) next to me, and here I was tossing and turning and dripping in sweat like Finn who had just come out of a sauna. He just rolled over and continued snoring. Bastard.
When I got up Saturday at 9:30, I could barely function. I mean I was groggy, grumpy and grouchy. It didn't help that my coffee thingie (French Press I think) was in the dishwasher, and Mr. Wonderful had just turned it on. So no coffee--didn't want to risk breaking it. I went back into my room with a hazy idea of folding laundry...instead I collapsed on the heap and fell back to sleep til, oh, 5pm.
Sunday? Lather, rinse, repeat. I slept pretty much all day. Dude, where's my weekend? I got nothing done. Zilch. Zero. Nada. No grading, no planning, no rec letter writing (11 left...), nothing fun to spice up the end of the week. &^%$#!
Monday was a holiday, and same thing. So I called Dr. N, figuring she'd tell me my TSH was clearly oversuppressed blah blah blah. No, she blames it squarely on menopause. Sigh. I'm 42. I'm too damn young to be pulling into this station already. She figures the RAI (gift that keeps on giving) fried what was left of my already pitiful ovaries, and my reproductive years are effectively over. Toast. Done.
Result? Not enough estrogen. Hence, hot flashes and insomnia.
Me at 2am, 3am, 4am...."Melting, I'm melting!"
Anyone who has known me for a long time knows that I love to sleep. I am not a morning person (thank you thyroid from hell) and never have been--if I can squeeze two more nanoseconds of sleep out of my morning, I will. Do not bug me early in the morning with a cheery "Rise and shine!" or I will throw things at you. And yell things at you. My mother used to drive me absolutely batty when I was younger--her thyroid was overactive, so she was the poster child for "Oh what a beautiful morning!!!"
I'm still amazed we didn't kill each other.
So there.
Anyway, Dr, N immediately starts telling me that she'll write a me a script for replacement hormones and that will cure my lack of sleep.....wait, isn't HRT a bad thing for all kinds of reasons? Ha ha, joke's on me--I remember hearing all those news reports a couple of years ago smugly thinking, "I won't have to worry about that for a while!", and I didn't pay attention to them. Funny life bites you in the ass, huh? Estrogen can feed tumors....remember that's why you weren't crazy about me trying to get pregnant post-thyca diagnosis? Not that it was really going to happen, but there was a very small sliver of hope that it could have at that point. I'll have to ask her why it would be ok to flood myself with estrogen now....just a thought. She said to try some natural stuff, and we'll talk more in February. She also started talking about all the other things my lack of sleep would mess up--high blood pressure, insulin resistance, weight gain...maybe I should have taken her up on her offer. She said I could take an over-the-counter aid, like Simply Sleep. I went to the local CVS to get some, and they were all out. What does that say about the state of our society?? I picked up the CVS brand, but I'm a little leery of trying it out on a school night. I'll wait till the weekend to make sure I can actually tolerate the stuff. But oh to have a good solid block of uninterrupted sleep....
So I tried some melatonin. It helped a little--I still woke up a ton, but at least I felt like I had gotten some sleep in there. Doesn't help that I caught a nasty cold running its way through school and I can't breathe. I wonder if my sinuses are worse since RAI? Oh wait--lack of sleep also equals compromised immune system. Double sigh.
Pity party, my place!
Ok, off to bed. Or off to toss and turn for a few hours, curse the snoring hulk, squint at the alarm clock, calculate how much sleep I can get before the alarm goes off, throw the covers off and on at least 5 times and maybe rest a little.
This is not a good state to be in when you work with teenagers all day. I don't think I ever appreciated that some of my teachers were in this same boat and having to deal with us all day.
Oh, and to add to the misery, my planned scrapbooking weekend has fallen through due a stomach bug that attacked my friend's 7 year old daughter. Today. I was planning to head out to her place tomorrow night for a wine-filled scrapbooking fest where I would finally (finally!) finish scrapbooking my wedding from April 2006. I took the day off from work and everything, now I have to give it back. I uploaded 146 pics from this year's adventures and picked them up at CVS too, and now they'll have to sit in the bag for a little while longer. We'll reschedule, but I was really looking forward to it. Maybe I'll sit up Friday night and work on a few pages. I need to finish it. Figures.
Rumors are snow is arriving after midnight tomorrow...I'll do my Snow Day Dance tomorrow, praying for Friday.
Now, off to try to sleep.
UPDATE: Woo hoo I actually slept through most of the night! I took some Dayquil and 2mg of melatonin. I could kind of hear myself talking to myself as I dozed off, but I don't know what kind of conversation we were having. I woke up once with a hot flash, but then slept for a good 5 hours without waking up. I actually felt kind of rested this morning! Yay melatonin.
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