I was talking with a high school friend who reminded me that when we were in ninth grade we were on split session. The older kids did the early morning start and we started school around eleven. How perfect! I have never been a crack-of-dawn-early-morning person. But now, well, let's just say my body may be up and around but the rest of me doesn't kick in until much later! It is one of those things that I seem to struggle with every day. Even when I am good to myself and do a slow start, there are days that the fog just doesn't lift until many hours later. It makes it difficult to get anything done and whatever I do seems to take three times longer to accomplish. If I am having a good morning I can get myself out of the house in forty-five minutes. On a typical day, it's more like two hours!!
I am working on my sleep schedule and making some progress. I am falling asleep pretty easily and I am also sleeping through the night. The part that isn't fixed yet is that non-restorative sleep nonsense. It seems so strange that I can sleep for eight hours (or even a bit longer) and wake up feeling like I pulled an all-nighter. I am not one to get drunk, but it feels like a kind of hang-over to me. I've done sleep studies and have had blood work that confirms that I am not sleeping well. I don't have sleep apnea but I do have slow and shallow breathing. I've gone the C-PAP route as well as the mouth appliance. Neither worked. I was fully compliant with the sleep mask, but it didn't give the doc the results he was looking for. The mouth appliance gave me such God-awful headaches that it made my head feel like it was about to split in two. So much for that. I am on a good mix of supplements that are giving me sleep duration, now I have to mange the quality of sleep a bit better.
I've adjusted my schedule as best I can to honor the rhythms of my body. I still want to be able to do more during my morning fog time, but I am at a point where most of what I can do is very passive and doesn't require much on my part. When I am doing something of significance, I accept that it may take a bit longer and that I may make a few (okay, maybe more than a few) mistakes along the way. I make sure that I make appointments at a time I can manage and that if I have something early in the day scheduled during the week, I am sure to compensate for that in choosing the other things I'll commit to. Then there's that good old adrenaline that seems to kick in when I'm out and about that makes me confident I can handle some out-of-the-ordinary things that pop up. I am fully aware of the play and pay nature of fibro and sometimes it's just worth it to go full-steam ahead and have a great time or a great day knowing that my comfy couch is there to catch me the next morning.
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