Daily Log #1 (Restless Leg and CP)

Well... I guess the best place to begin this is with how well I slept last night. Not good at all!! Before I go to bed at night I take 40mg of Oxycontin, 10/325mg Norco (Most people know it better as Vicodin), and 4mg of Requip. The Oxycontin and Norco are for pain relief so I can fall asleep and the Requip is for a condition called Restless Leg Syndrome or RLS. The RLS causes extreme fatigue in the legs and gives you the sensation like you need to keep your legs moving constantly or you'll go crazy from the discomfort. Some nights I'll take Ambien to help me sleep, but I only take that when I've already gone a few nights with little or no sleep.

Remember those lab experiments you did in high school where you connected a battery to a dead frog's legs and they'd start to twitch and jump? Combine RLS with Sciatic nerve problems and it's like someone zapping my back with current from a nuclear power plant. My legs jump uncontrollably with a feeling of electrical shock striking the center of my low back, just above the hip bone (Technically the L5-S1 joint), and then it streaks down the back of my legs causing them to spasm and shaking the whole bed. The Requip reduces the frequency of these attacks. Some nights, when a bad episode hits, I have to go sleep on the couch or I keep my wife awake all night. Last night, for the first time in a few nights, I was able to escape that ordeal.

Yesterday, I tried to help out around the house by putting some dirty cloths through the washer and dryer. Simple enough, right? Not for me. My whole life I've been warned not to be lazy. It was pounded into my head by my mother when I wouldn't clean my room. So I've worked my butt off since I was 10 years old and started working summers for my dad doing construction. Except for the time around the end of my first marriage and I started going to college, I've worked very hard. Now I have a hard time doing laundry. Here I am, this big man ex-marine and I can't help my wife carry groceries from the car to the kitchen. This is a source of major depression that I'll probably write about later. In any case, I get so frustrated not helping around the house that I go and do a lot more housework than my body can handle and I end up in severe pain for the next few days afterward--regardless of the pain medication.


So, last night my back and other things were giving me fits and I'd sleep for an hour at a time and wake up for fifteen or twenty minutes before dozing off again. Sometimes I lay awake as the pain pills ware off and the new ones kick in, which is usually about an hour. On a very good night I can get maybe three hours of uninterrupted sleep. I've had nights where I didn't sleep at all.

All of this means that I was extremely tired all day today just like most days. I pretty much have to sleep whenever I can just to come close to getting enough. With that being said, it's late, I'm tired as always, and I'm going to bed for another long and restless night.

Good night...

BTW - If we hadn't purchased a memory foam mattress for our bed my back would be much worse. This mattress is the only reason why I'm able to sleep at all in a bed. It gives the perfect amount of support for a person of any size. I highly recommend this mattress for everyone!

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