Tag: meditation

Can’t Sleep

I’m in this really weird cycle where I alternate insomnia with narcolepsy. One night I’m out like a light, and sleep the whole night through, and am up before my alarm. Those mornings I am relatively full of energy.. Another night I toss and turn for hours before falling asleep, and then waking up late; sometimes i sleep in the whole day.

The strangest part is that doesn’t seem to correlate to my injection schedule. Last night I injected, but slept great and had good energy this morning. The Wednesday previous I spent the entire day in bed after a terrible night sleep.

To make it more complicated, my Dr took me of Ambien, as I was doing weird things in my sleep. The Ambien stuff. Pretty well documented at this point. So I’m scared to take it, in fear of what I will say in my sleep, do in my sleep, or not wake up when my sleep-talking wakes up O.

Two nights ago I gave up: I went on a full apartment search for Ambien. As I have not been taking it for several months O has expropriated my supply (as I suggested). But when I went looking for it, it wasn’t in any of the medicine cabinets, toiletry travel bags, or anything. I didn’t want to wake her up. I ended up taking more Klonopin and some Atarax and tossing and turning myself to sleep downstairs.

Sometime in the middle of the night, O came down to make sure I was okay. I was so disoriented, I couldn’t form complete sentences, and for an irrational/chemical reason was on the verge of tears. I tried to explain, but I only got out half sentences. And repeated those half sentences several times. Then stumbled off to the bathroom (nearly falling) and coming back and crashing out again. I worried that I freaked O out, but knew that she had seen this before from me. We talked about it in the morning, and I think I explained myself, in so much as my irrationality could be explained.

She showed me where she keeps her Ambien. On the bedstand, in a decorative metal jewelbox like container. It is both Vienna Seccessionist and Flower Power at the same time. And it is full of Ambien. I just took one. Well, half of one. Right before I started writing this.

I think I will go meditate for a few minutes, and try again

I am an Artwork

In San Francisco I was ignored or harassed as homeless when I got the pins and needles and sat in half lotus or lied down in the street.

In Los Angeles, the sidewalk was so dirty and full of glass that I wouldn’t lie down, but I huddled shirtless on the curb and no one paid me any notice.

In New York, as soon as I feel the symptoms coming on I have been popping out of the studio to sit on the sidewalk.  The studio is in the prime Chelsea art district.  When I sit in half lotus in front of gallery row, people slow and look.  They are mostly wondering why a man in a t-shirt is sitting in a yoga pose in 30 degree weather.  But some of them stop dead in their tracks, and contemplate me… AS IF I WERE A WORK OF ART!  I swear someone almost reached for their camera.

Apples and Peanut Butter

On Sep 24, 2008, at 2:12 PM, addwag wrote:

i was thinking about that analogy that monk gave you about billy’s bakery..

what if you love cupcakes and then you resist getting a cupcake and then after a while you no longer crave or need cupcakes- which is the goal?

then do you lose what you love because you resist it? and if so, what do you love instead?

i think that for him it is all about controlling and submlimatng desire.  and chanelling that energy into meditation (and all the god stuff.)

but for me, it is more important as an analogy of changing behaviors.  understanding how behaviors are created and reinforced.  positive and negative.

i *had* to do this (w/o really understanding the process) when i got off of caffeine 10 years ago.  i had to do this just this past month with learning to incorporate the neti pot into my twice-daily ablutions.  and i’ve definitely had to do this with meditation. but there is a point of inflection, where it gets easier and easier to do (and harder and harder to not do.)  that is the real point.

but when you leave something behind, you always have the memory.  sometimes its not the love for the thing itself, but your desire for something.  and sometimes desire is something good to get rid of.  covetousness desire.  greedy desire.

the IFN makes it so i don’t like chocolate.  i used to *love* chocolate.  and for now, that love is gone.  and at first it was terribly sad for me.  i felt like i was missing part of myself.  but love of chocolate isn’t me, its just something i had.  it was replaced with love of watermelon.  now that watermelon is no longer in season, i have love of apples and peanut butter.  things come and go.

Inteferon Dreams

I restarted my IFN last night.  My mom arrived yesterday.  This is actually a coincidence.  But it was really nice to have her here while I tried to pretend i wasn’t nervous.  I can’t quite tell whether i was actually calm, or was in denail.  previously it was clearly denial, w/ a lot of pacing.  but today, after a week of meditating, and my mom’s comforting and distracting presence, i think i might actually have been somewhere in the middle.  close enough to the middle, that I don’t know.

I just woke up.  Its 7:30AM.  I have a headache.  I had the usual chills, though less fever than normal. woke at 4:30, and only kind of slept after that.

Clearly my unconscious was churning through the implications of restarting the IFN.  I had a series of dreams about IFN, science, and weakness.  One I only remember as me on a mountain bike, trying to climb a hill, and getting passed and yelled at: this is about the bully who rides in Prospect Park, and who yelled at me last time i rode there.  I remember one about camping with my mother in snow (she has car camped w/ me once or twice tops.)  But the best one was another naked school dream.

I was in the audience at the front of a lecture hall listening to a lecture on the immune system.  It was a young female professor.  She went through all of the obvious functions of the immune system, the lymph nodes, whats in blood, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and some other stuff that i remember from my many bloodwork results (billyrubin, leukocytes, neutraphil, etc).  Then she talked about Interferons, which stimulate neutrophil?  I forget.  I was repeating the pseudo-high school science lesson i’ve gotten over the course of this process.  Things I never really knew.

Then the lecture happened again, except this time it was a song i knew.  But only kindof.  I was singing along to the lyrics to comfort myself, b/c at the same time it was the song, it was also the same immune system lecture.  The young co-eds to my left and right were indignant — I mean, I am tone deaf, and didn’t know half of the lyrics to whatever song it was.  One of them (on the left) said, “do you actually know this song?” in a tone that made it clear she was really saying “shut up asshole.”  When she got to the part about Inteferons, and the side effects of Interferon therapy, and listed them all, and talked about how hard it was, i said out loud “I have that.”  And I started crying.

At that moment, the class was dismissed, and the co-eds kind of dissappeared, but kind of registered their surprise and also disgust/fear of me. I get up, and realize that i’m only wearing a t-shirt.  chest is covered, but the choice bits are poking out the bottom (LOL).  as per usual with naked dreams, i’m not that embarrassed, just concerned about the difficulties it sets up.  I try to get out of the lecture hall, which actually is surrounded by an airport like structure, with big pillars, and caverns, but no gates or planes.

Somehow I realize that I’m supposed to teach the same class for the third time around.  I hear “well, if your such an expert, why don’t you just teach the class.”  I try to escape via the caverns in the edges of the building, while someone comes in singing with a choir from the entrance door, and makes their way to the dias at the front of the room.  They are singing an a capella motown/gospel song; all i could make out was the refrain: “Here comes the Doctor.  Here comes the Doctor.”

I escape to the outside (maybe i magically get pants, maybe not, i can’t remember.) The young co-ed on my right comes up to me on the path away from the big building and touches me with a big rolled up sheet of paper.  She offers it to me.  I open it.  It is that 2 foot by 3 foot size of paper that comes in pads and is used in classrooms in lieu of a chalkboard/whiteboard.  There are words on it written in in black whiteboard marker.  I don’t remember what it said.

I’m hungry now.  I’m starting to get some fever action.  Going to eat cereal and lie back down.

I did the dishes

I did the dishes this morning.  This is no small thing.  I haven’t really done them for 7 months…  P and S and mom did them.  But S is in San Diego.  And my apartment is quiet and empty.  And the 48 hours of dishes were slowly building up.  And I took 10 minutes before I left today, and did them.

I started a mediatation class this monday.  Its Yogic.  Which is a little weird for me, b/c it involves God talk.  I just think of it all as a metaphor.  But there were some really good things that the really cute young monk talked about.  One of them was the idea that you are always either reinforcing or correcting behavior.  Every decisions reinforces that behaviour.

The monk used the example of cupcakes from Billy’s Bakery.  He obviously loves them.  If you walk by and smell the wonders of the cupcakes, and have one, the next time, you will want one.  You will be habituated to them.  If you go in then, you will almost expect to do this again and again. You get the ball rolling, and it rolls on its own inertia.

Conversely, it is hard to bring yourself to meditate at first.  It seems painful, and hard.  But the second time it is easier.  And the third even easier, and before you know it, it is just part of the routine.  You get the ball rollling and it rolls on its own inertia. Or at least that is the idea.

So washing the dishes is a big first step in getting the ball rolling.  Tomorrow it will be easier to do the dishes, and by next week, it will be no big deal.  Returning to the New Normal is hard.

My brother is on a plane to San Dieigo

And I am now here by myself.

Before I went to sleep, we raised a toast with the leftover champagne from his Sunday party.  I had less than half a glass, but on top of the other drugs I am on, I was nearly immediately woozy.  I slept harder than I have in months.  I woke up in the middle of the night to turn off the fans, and walked into more than one wall or piece of furniture.  Very deep, heavily drugged sleep.

Today is the first transitional day to Fall.  Its not Fall yet, but it isn’t Summer anymore.  Last night I didn’t have to run the AC, and I even turned off the fans in the middle of the night and put on the duvet.

So this morning it is twice as quiet.  No S, no whirring air.

I woke up from a dream in which I was crying.  I was crying in the dream. I don’t think I was crying physically, though I woke up with all the emotions of crying.  The dream was an extended “I forgot to wear my clothes” dream.  As a teacher, these dreams happen to me.  Once I actually forgot my clothes, but that is a whole other story.  Usually I am not worried about being naked — I worry about the other people made uncomfortable by my nakedness. but this time I was worried, even though I did have underwear.

In the dream I got into an argument with my father about underwear — this make no sense, b/c it was a dream, but I think I was borrowing someone’s iPhone to watch a youtube video about underwear, and my father got angry because I he had ironed my underwear, and that was not enough, i had to go look at underwear too!  This, of course, makes no sense because my father doesn’t ever do my laundry, and i have never in my life had ironed underwear.  That might be fun.

Somehow we were all outside, surrounding a school bus.  I was in the bus.  Everyone was outside.  I cursed angrily and threw my housekeys at the front window, which made a small chip or crack in the window, and walked out of the bus.  The outside turned into the tightest bend in the street that I grew up on, and I started walking through tall grass in the direction of my parents house.  Crying.  I was in front, but I could feel the presence of my brother walking with me, to my left and a pace behind me.  Some other people, who might have been friends or might have been relatives broke off from the group and started walking behind me.  I was still crying in the dream.  Then I woke up.

I have a habit of having the most obvious dreams.  Really unsubtle…

On top of all this, I think I’m getting sick again

The good news is that I have started meditating again.  I’m going to a class w/ O.  Its Yoga, not the kind I did before.  But close enough.

Post Injection: Rough two days

The last 48 hrs have been pretty rough.  I woke up Tuesday feeling like had done a really hard workout, then drank the better part of a 12 pack.  My whole body ached, I had a pounding headache, i was nauseous, and I felt like it was all going to get worse if I moved.  But I moved.  I got up.  I slowly felt a little better.  But the headache never went away (despite some Codeine), and the chills and fevers came back in the evening.  I did manage to sleep last night, but again, woke up feeling like crap.  I felt better mid day.  This evening I’m panicking about the injection I have to give myself.  I’m scared.  I spent an hour on a park bench wearing my ice vest alternately trying to meditate and succeeding in crying.

Spoke Too Soon: really bad night

it seemed like it was going to be an easy round this time, but i spoke too soon. I went through a mild round of chills and fever, felt better, and went to sleep around 11, drugged and seemingly peaceful.

 

I woke at 130am with the worst chills I have had yet.  Much worse than the first night I started the much higher IV dosage. I tried to get warm with the heating pad and relax as best i could, but my muscles were on the threshold of spasming and going into shakes.  Shivering at the top of the stairs, I called S for help.

He turned the AC off, brought luke warm water, warmer sweatpants, a winter down blanket, arranged the heating pad, and held my hand until I/my body had calmed down enough that i was not shaking anymore.

Sometime later I realized I had started sweating. It is amazing how I can’t notice that liminal moment when I transition, I only notice once I am already overheated and feverish.  I pushed all of my warm stuff off and crawled out of bed.  I think S was there by the time i got out into the living room.  AC back on, ice packs on the chest, drinking cold water.

The fever was still going strong when S went to be around 3am.  I tried to get to sleep.  i took even more sleeping drugs.  my mind was racing, and my body was aching.  i tried to meditate.  i tried to do guided visualizations.  i listened to Music for Airports. and still I was sweating, and tossing and turning with no real chance of sleeping.  It reminded me of the second day of IV infusion, when I couldn’t sleep all night. 

As the sun started to come out, sometime before 6am, I thought I might try to sleep on the couch.  sometimes moving into a new bed helps me.  its like i think i’m starting the getting-to-sleep process over, with a clean slate.  i pulled off the cushions, brought out my pillow and sheet, set down my liter jar of water, and went to put away my ice pack.  coming back to the couch i forgot about the water, and kicked it over, spilling a liter of water on the floor and splashing it all over the sheet and cushions.  it was too much.  i just sat down on the wet couch and cried. 

it felt good to cry.  i was really frustrated.  and i couldn’t really express it.  and i haven’t cried in some time.  and the crying was maybe the thing that made me tired enough that no matter what, i was going to be able to sleep.

I finally slept around 7am.  I woke around 1030am. i feel like i got hit by a truck.  or maybe like i did a hard workout, then drank a six pack on an empty stomach.

what i don’t get is why there were two waves of chills/fever, why the second one was worse, and why the self injection seems to have such stronger side effects, at least on the first night.  I guess mainlining any drug is the best way to take it.  Maybe that or snorting it.  LOL.

so, my mind was racing the whole time.  i kept remembering things i needed to do.  and ideas i had had but had forgotten, and questions i had, and thoughts i wanted to remember.  so i wrote them down in the book O gave me.  in the dark.  my handwriting is bad enough when i can see what i am writing.  check out what it looks like when i can’t.  I think i will be able to decipher these runes.  I think so, but it will take an effort.

Insomniac Notes 1

Insomniac Notes 2

 

Calmly, I start my self-injection tomorrow

I start my self injection tomorrow.  Strangely i’m not nervous.  The last two times I started the drugs I was in a real panic.  The initial start had me panicking 2 weeks out.  I panicked for two days before the restart after I had to take a week off on a drug holiday.  But this time I am barely giving it a thought.  Maybe that means its denial.

The drugs have to be kept refrigerated. I have the drugs, and I have to keep them them cold on my trip up to Columbia Presbyterian.  I was looking around the house to find something to keep them insulated.  I thought of slipping it inside one of the ice pockets on my ice vest, but I’m afraid that it will actually freeze the drugs, which I have been told ruins them.  Or maybe it just breaks the needle.  So I settled on putting it into a metal coffee travel mug.  I was inspired by stories that I have been told of the pro cyclists around 10 years ago who were all doping, and were toting around their needles inside of metal water bottles.  Apparently the needles would clink back and forth making noise.  And everyone was doing it.  So everyone had a clinking metal water bottle.  So off I go tomorrow with my clinking coffee mug.