Narcoleptic Nightmares

I spoke too soon.  I know I did.  I even said I was speaking too soon in my last post.  But I did it and this week I have paid.  And paid.  And paid.

 

I have not had an easy week this week.  Every night I've woken up from the worst nightmares.  Cold sweats, the lot.  And trust me, a Narcoleptic Nightmare is scary.  We can't always tell real from fantasy - which isn't as much fun as you might think.  In fact, there should be an age limit, a really tall height bar and, hell, a maturity test before you're allowed to wander through my subconscious.  It's got to the point now where I'm actually a little afraid to sleep and when I actually do sleep, I act out my dreams and wake as tired as I went to bed.

 

As a result my days have been as bad as my nights.  I've been running slower and laggier than a 1980s PC.  Seriously, anything that needs doing? Ask Prince Daddy cos Princess Mummy is just not functioning. 

 

Another fun side effect of severe sleep deprivation is the increase in periods of automatic behaviour.  For non-narcoleptics, that means my brain is taking a 5-20 minute siesta without telling the rest of me.  So I carry on doing whatever I was doing before sleep.  Saturday, that something was eating grapes.  So I carried on eating grapes - until I'd eaten damn near the whole pound! I also missed a big chunk of what I was trying to watch on TV and was as sick as a dog.  (Eating a pound of grapes in a sitting will do that to you!)

 

Last night I had my first full night's sleep in over a week.  Woke up this morning feeling tip-top.  Took Little Prince to school - all of a 5 minute walk away and continued to prove my fineness by having a splat in Tesco.  So, one good night's sleep does NOT conquer all!

To update from last week's post, I met with the Anaesthetist at the hospital.  He was quite excited that I was his first Narcolepsy sufferer in 30 years of practice.  Vaguely disturbing.  He had, however, thoroughly researched Narcolepsy, Cataplexy, and their effects on Pregnancy and Labour.  He is quite happy for me to try for a normal birth which was good news as some people in my Narcolepsy group reported that their consultants etc had pushed for a caesarean section under the heading of "better safe than sorry." 

I don't know if I should be happy or scared that, as my obstetric team have no experience of Narcolepsy, they are happy for me to make all the decisions and call all the shots.  So much responsibility on my little - nonmedical - shoulders.  Still, I assume that if anything was to go wrong, or I were to suggest anything outrightly dangerous, they'd step in.  Right?  Right? Um.....