Grandma Henke

I am starting to see the light of day.   Literally!   These new medications are doing things I didn’t expect of them.    I am feeling like going to bed before midnight and I am feeling like getting up before 8:30 in the morning.     I’ve been sleeping like a baby!

You’re talking to someone who has NEVER felt like getting up … ever … as long as I can remember … except maybe Christmas morning.    Mornings have always greeted me with what I can only suppose feels like a “hangover”.     I’ve always felt a heaviness that pulls me back into sleep before my mind could slip free of its hold enough to scream “wake up” to the rest of me.     It’s comparable to how you feel after surgery when you hear your name being called out of a fog.    If left to myself I can easily slip into an early morning, druggish like sleep that lasts until well past noon.  In part, this is because my mind has refused to shut down the night before.   It’s all fed into itself.  And then, of course, there is the physical pain factor of fibromyalgia.     Less sleep, more pain.   More pain, less sleep.

For two weeks now I’ve been taking Cymbalta and Lyrica to help relieve the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia (I know … I’ve read about all the side affects … but when you are desperate for relief sometimes you just have to go for it) and although I’m still struggling with nausea, headaches, diarrhea, and dizziness getting used to them in my system, I find I am starting to feel sleepy at night and waking up quietly in the morning feeling refreshed.     One of the things I’ve felt most cheated out of in my life is not  being a morning person.    When I’ve literally stayed awake all night the breaking of dawn has been magical and I’ve enjoyed it.   Those mornings have been like a quiet gift.     I’ve come to grow to love the quiet of the night out of necessity, but still, it’s the mornings I’ve always craved.

When my children were young, I forced myself to get up and greet them with open eyes and a smile on my face, putting a hot meal into their bellies and getting them off to school, but my brain still knew that it should be in bed and it was a daily battle to stay away from its draw all morning.     Sometime after 11:00 my mind would finally give a little click, look around and say, “Oh yeah … Doh, time to get going!”    Children tend to have demands that you meet whether your body wants to comply or not, thank goodness, and after the children were older I started to work full time which necessitated that I force my body out of bed day after day, but never with that enthusiasm of a new day filled with new opportunities and promise.     After retirement, I noticed it became even more difficult to force myself up in the mornings, so I just gave in and became a full time night person … still wishing for mornings.    Lucky for me Lynn is compatible and easy going.

So … you see … I’m not taking this laying down!     I’m really excited  and hopeful.   Hoping, hoping, hoping this won’t wear off as I get used to the medications.      Oh … and the ultimate affect takes 6 to 8 weeks to establish?   Wow!  I can’t wait!

As for the pain, I’ve finished a two week treatment of Prednisone and it has helped the inflammation.    I hope the other two medications take over in that area now and the pain doesn’t come back too much once the Prednisone wears off.     If you get a chance … say a little prayer for me, will you?   I really want these meds to work for me.