Deep R.E.M. sleep with lots of dreams
I have been sleeping so deeply lately.
Usually I wake up before the alarm. But, I set it for 6:30 A.M., just in case. I get up at the at the same time, seven days a week, as it is better for migraeuners to do so. I’ll do just about anything to reduce the number of migraines I get.
Lately, I’ve been sleeping so deeply that the alarm has been waking me up.
And, I am in deep R.E.M. sleep when it does.
Now, in the past, I’ve been able to turn my alarm off, snooze for a few more minutes, and wake up on my own within ten or fifteen minutes.
I have a simple battery powered alarm clock. It doesn’t have an actual “snooze” button. It’s a cool clock, though. It’s all retro-looking, and has Yoda on it. The angry Yoda, where he is kicking ass with his light saber, and throwing things around in the Senate room, in the last movie. I special ordered it off of eBay. (Angry Yoda was one of the few highlights of the new trilogy. I would pay good money to see that new trilogy completely scrubbed of any trace of that hideously annoyed “Jar Jar” creature. What was George Lucas thinking?! How could the man who created the original trilogy could up with something like that? Then, again, there were warning signs, even back then. In order to enjoy “Return of the Jedi,” I still have to think of the Ewoks as minature Wookies.)
Yeah, so, anyway, angry Yoda rang his nice little retro alarm bell right at 6:30 AM, (thank you, ‘o tiny little pissed off Jedi Master alarm clock), and I pressed down on his smushy little silver alarm clock head and turned him off.
I immediately fell back into deep, deep sleep.
I didn’t wake up again until 7:40.
My son needs to be at school at 8:15.
We still made it on time, and even rode bikes to school.
We had so many convenient excuses NOT to take the bikes.
We were running late.
It was chilly. The “marine layer” hadn’t lifted yet. We are just 12 miles from the Pacific Ocean, as the crow flies. Since I am not a crow, it takes 25 minutes to drive to the nearest beach. With traffic, it takes 30 minutes to drive to the nearest beach with good surf, (the East side of Santa Cruz, (39th Street, 41st Street, “Sharks,” and the break in front of Jack O’Neill’s house,), and 45 minutes to reach the West side of Santa Cruz, (Cowell’s Beach.) (There is no way I’d surf Steamer’s Lane. Steamer’s Lane is the break right by the lighthouse. If you’ve ever done the tourist thing in Santa Cruz, and stood by the light house watching the surfers, then you’ve seen Steamer’s Lane. If you’ve stood on the pier watching the surfers, then you’ve seen Cowell’s Beach. Steamer’s Lane is a shortboarder break, and primarily a “locals only” break. Since I live “over the hill,” (12 miles away), I am not “local.” Cowell’s Beach is a longboarder break, and since the surf schools teach there, it is traditionally more-friendly to non-locals, as long as you follow surf etiquette. Break surf etiquette, and you risk being flipped off your board by someone trying to teach you a bit of “etiqutte.”)
So, we don’t live on the ocean anymore, like we did when we lived in Morro Bay. The damp, cold climate was the worst possible place for someone with fibromyalgia to live. But, since we’re surfers, we still wanted easy access to decent surf. So, where we live, we usually get the marine layer in the morning, (the technically correct term for fog that comes off the ocean), and it generally always burns off by 10 or 11 AM. The marine layer is very important, as it doesn’t rain here in the summer, and it provides much needed moisture to the plant life. It also keeps this area from getting too hot. In essence, we live in about as near perfect a climate as you can get.
Still, though, for someone with fibromyalgia, when it is damp, cold and chilly out, it is so tempting to take the car...
My son and I both have fibromyalgia...
But, both of us have gotten used to getting exercise first thing in the morning.
Despite the fibro-unfriendly weather, taking the car to school seemed even more unappealing than the chilly weather.
So, after eating a rushed breakfast, packing a quick dairy-free, soy-free lunch for my son, (he has a lot of food intolerances due to fibro-related IBS), we put on fleece-lined windbreakers, and headed off to school.
It’s about a mile to school, most of it all uphill.
My legs seem mostly clear of fibro, but my right hip is not. I must have a huge honkin’ deposit of fibrocrud that is cycling there right now.
When we pedal uphill, I experience sharp PAIN in my right hip. This is take-your-breath-away kind of pain.
I know it’s all just fibromyalgia stuff. I have never suffered an injury to my hip. And, my last mapping clearly showed a large deposit still there. I can actually feel the calcium phosphate deposit with my fingers. The whole area is very tender to the touch. I can’t wait until that deposit clears out.
It is so painful I can’t speak while we are pedaling to school. My son and I have a tandem bike, and he loves to chatter away back there. Mainly, he likes to ask me math questions, because he adores mathematics.
“Mommy, infinity is the highest number there is, right?” he’ll ask.
“Uh, huh,” I’ll grunt out, huffing and puffing, trying to conserve oxygen, just trying to get up the hill, and ignore that right hip pain.
“And, the symbol for infinity is a sideways eight, right, Mommy?” he’ll ask.
“Uh, huh,” I’ll grunt again, trying to block out the pain.
“So, Mommy, if there are negative numbers, like when the temperature is below zero, could there be negative infinity?”
I am not kidding you, he asks me stuff like this, and expects me to answer, when I am just gasping for air, trying to get the darned bike up those huge hills, (we have to take a bunch of different streets, to zig zag over to school. There’s no direct route.)
“Can we talk about this later?” I’ll huff out, between gasps of air.
“Sure, Mommy,” he’ll say, in his chipper little voice.
He’ll be quiet for all of about 30 seconds, but you could tell its just because he is thinking of another question...
“So, if anything times itself is zero, would would happen if you multiplied infinity times...”
“Alex!” I interrupt, “later, OK? How about you and Daddy have a long math talk after school,” I gasp out, as we stop at an intersection, waiting for traffic to stop, so we can cross.
“OK, Mommy,” he says, “but, what if...”
I had to have a tutor just to get through high school Trigonometry, and my son wants to discuss probable theorems of negative infinity on the way to kindergarten. He soooooo did not get that from ME! (Although, my Mom, and two of my brothers are gifted in math. The gene just seems to have skipped me. And, my husband is most definitely gifted in multiple areas of both science and mathematics. So, I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Alex is driving me crazy with questions that I can’t answer. Maybe now that he’s learning to read, he can help me balance the checkbook...)
My son just adores the tandem bike we use for going to school.
It was very inexpensive. We just bought this $79 kiddie-tandem-bike attachment from Costco.com and attached it to our adult bike. Voila. Instant parent-child tandem bike.
(They are double the price if you purchase the attachment from a bike shop.)
Since he now goes to school by tandem bike, my son feels like he has been elevated to a whole new standard of “coolness.”
Kids just stare at him when he whizzes by them on that bike. With two of us peddling, we can go REALLY fast in the bike lane. The car traffic just backs up, (due to a stop sign), all the way down the school driveway. The bike lane runs parallel to the car lane. Here we are, whizzing by this long line of cars, all backed up, due to the stop sign. You know there are kids, strapped in their car seats in those cars, thinking: “It would be a lot more fun to be riding a bike, than sitting here in a car...”
Kids just stare at him when he whizzes by them on that bike. With two of us peddling, we can go REALLY fast in the bike lane. The car traffic just backs up, (due to a stop sign), all the way down the school driveway. The bike lane runs parallel to the car lane. Here we are, whizzing by this long line of cars, all backed up, due to the stop sign. You know there are kids, strapped in their car seats in those cars, thinking: “It would be a lot more fun to be riding a bike, than sitting here in a car...”
In addition to riding the bike, I’ve been taking care of my neighbors’ dog, enjoying long walks together. My neighbors are on vacation, and the dog is lonely, so I introduced him to my cats. After a few minutes of hesitation, and tentative butt-sniffing, they all decided everything smelled fine and no one was a threat to anybody. So, the dog has been hanging out over at our house with the cats. The cats are enjoying the dog, and keep trying to engage her in play, rolling marbles over to her, and pouncing on her. She didn’t mind the marbles, but the pouncing scared the daylights out of her. (She’s an old dog, about 12 or 13, so two highly energetic kittens are probably a bit much for her at times.) After a few hours with the cats, I walk the dog back home, figuring she needs time to re-coup from both the walk, and being pounced on by my two overgrown kittens. (They’re about 18 months old now, but still manage to destroy as much stuff in the house as when I first brought them home as tiny kittens.)
So, with all this lovely fresh air and exercise, I have been sleeping really well.
Well, that, and I have been taking Iodoral. Have you heard of it? Some folks on the Guai Protocol have been experimenting with combining Guai with Iodine. Hee hee-- when I write it that way, it sounds so illicit. I mentioned it in one of my video blogs. One of my blog readers told me about it, and there is a whole seperate support group (fibromyalgiarecovery.com) devoted just to the concept of combining Guai and Iodine, so I won’t get into it here. But, apparently, one of the beneficial effects of the Iodine supplementation is deeper R.E.M. sleep. So, that could be it, too.
So, in that one hour after I smashed the silver top of my angry Yoda clock, I had the most vivid dream. Definitely a sign I am getting very restorative R.E.M. sleep these days. I’m having vivid dreams all night long these days, and remembering them in the mornings. Nothing overly exciting, just usually a rehash of the days’ events, with the usual weirdness thrown in.
For example, here’s the one I had yesterday during that extra hour of sleep...the Freudian fans would have fun with this one...
I’m driving in a station wagon with my “family.” Nope, not my husband and son. My original family-- my parents and brothers.
Weirdly enough, there was no tension in the car, no arguments between my parents. Everybody was getting along. That was really nice. I love it when my parents get along, and the tension is gone, and we can just enjoy being together as a family without some ridicilous argument spoiling the gathering.
My brothers were all in the car, too. No wives, (or ex-wives), since all my brothers are divorced, or in the process of getting divorced. And, no kids.
Just the original family, as it was growing up-- my Mom, my Dad, and my three brothers.
We’re driving along a “land bridge” with the ocean on two sides.
There was a “land bridge” like this in Morro Bay, built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950s. The Morro Bay one simply leads out to Morro Rock. The “bay” of Morro Bay is on one side of the land bridge, and the Pacific Ocean is on the other side. The road is paved, and you can drive all the way out to Morro Rock. It was created to create a safe harbor for the fishing boats in the “bay” part of it, but in doing so, messed up the natural eco-system. The waves don’t flow like they did before, and the bay has to be dredged every day by a dredging ship. Nature used to naturally dredge the bay, of Morro Bay, but the land bridge mucked up the whole natural flow of things. Back then, nature was often looked at as a thing to be manipulated to suit our needs. The fact that the bay fills up with muck, whereas before it naturally cleansed itself, is evidence of what happens when you mess with a perfectly good eco-system.
Ah, but, anyway, we were driving on a land bridge like that one, with a paved road on it, just like the one in Morro Bay.
Except this one didn’t lead to a big hunkin’ volcanic rock, like the Morro Rock. This one lead to a deep dark tunnel.
On either side of the road, resting gently on the ocean, were cargo containers. Tons and tons of cargo containers. They were very neatly arranged, and all were labeled with names and logos on the side, telling you what goods were inside the containers. They contained a whole variety of merchandise. There were so many cargo containers on either side of the road that you couldn’t really see the ocean. All you could see where these containers. I’m not sure if the containers were resting on docks, or barges. All I could see were the containers themselves.
Somehow I knew I was in North Carolina.
Odd, because I have not spent much time in North Carolina. I’ve only been there twice in my life, but it is the location of my husband’s new company, Cree. (Barack Obama visited Cree last Monday. His boss was on CNN with Barack.)
Somebody was speaking. It sounded like my brother Mike. He is my oldest brother- the one with the spinal cancer. He was talking about the cargo containers, and we were all politely listening to him. No one was interrupting him, contradicting him, or arguing with him. That was all very nice. Everyone in my family was being so well-behaved.
And, ahead of us still lay that dark tunnel.
I felt at peace, and happy to be with my family, and happy that no one was fighting.
And, then I woke up.
I glanced at angry Yoda, saw how late it was, and immediately sprang up, waking up my son out of his loft bed, and waking my husband up.
My husband helped get my son into his school uniform, and helped pack his lunch. Working together as a team, the three of us got ready to go in a very expedient manner.
We even remembered to give my son his Guaifenesin.
I was telling that story to one of my friends from the Guai Group, and she commented: “Wow, a year or two ago, you couldn’t have gotten ready that fast, and you definitely would have taken the car.”
She’s absolutely right.
Mornings used to be so difficult. It used to take me so long to shake off the lethargy of sleep. I would wake up late and take forever to get going. Many of the meds I was on had “somnolence” as a side effect, (sleepiness.) It felt like waking up with a drug hang over, (except that I’ve never actually had a true “hang over”, so I can’t truly be sure what that feels like.)
Giving up taking pain killers in the morning has helped a lot. I think now that my body no longer wakes up “craving” some sort of pill, it is much easier to get up.
Going through two weeks of withdrawals from all painkillers was difficult, but completely worth it. I feel free now, and I am definitely benefitting from this freedom in many ways.
Medications can truly be like a noose around your neck. It is not until you live without them, that you realize you really can live without them.
And, isn’t that what we all truly want? Our freedom? Our lives back?
Sleeping great- lots of energy
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
