Yesterday turned into a day of odd feelings, not sensations as these were in my head, not my body. I guess that it had to be due to the extra MST I took but the timings were really odd, as I said yesterday they don’t work straight away, they build up before any real effect, but 3 hours after taking it, I suddenly felt sleepy, not the demanding tired that goes with most of my condition and I live with constantly, this was more like having that of having a mug of hot chocolate when I was a child, the final thing needed before sleep swept over me, contented and gone. It only lasted a few hours and once I had had my nap, it had gone fully, but returned later, about an hour this time after taking my second full round of meds, I felt like curling up on the settee and sleeping just where I was, something I have never done. The pain reduction wasn’t as great as I was hoping for, but to be honest I didn’t actually expect any change, so what there was was a bonus, some of my muscles were more relaxed and I had the freedom of at least not having to fight with my body to just keep going and doing what I always do.

After I had my nap, I got up yet again to something that constantly puzzles me, both my arms and my legs felt heavy, floppy and dense. I know that when I lie down I remain motionless, but I also know that doing so seems to have a real effect in that I can never really use my limbs, or feel them when I first get out of bed. My arms just sort of hang there, feeling totally useless, but of course, I can use them, just as I can at any other point of the day, it is just this odd feeling of them being dead that gets to me. Strangely I don’t really feel the same way in the morning, only after I have been lying down for anything less than 2 hours, almost as if my insistence on making them relax has an extended effect. I can only really describe it as being as though they have become hypnotised by my relaxation process and don’t quite know how to break the command and return to normal. I may be up and moving around, but no one has told them that they too can respond to the change in my position. For the last couple of years I have had to learn to almost clamp my arms in a set position to allow me to go to sleep, should any part of my hand be touching my leg or side, the point where they meet has a nasty habit of increasing pain until I can’t take anymore and I have to move them apart, something that always means me clawing my way back to being awake and then having to start the whole process over again. So I lie there, arms clamped in my mind to the mattress and with every muscle intentionally relaxed, great until I get up, I have never been hypnotised, so I don’t know how it feels, it is only my interruption of the sensation and the only thing that makes any real sense. It may well be that I have built myself a loose loose situation and that there is no answer to it, other than to do just what I do know, get on with it.

I woke at 4:30 this morning, in pain and with light filling the bedroom, Adam had forgotten the curtains, but as I was in pain, I can’t really put the blame on his shoulders. Despite everything I had taken to try and make last night another night of sleep, I failed, I did play around with the idea of taking another booster before trying to find sleep again, but I have been taking them too often, yes because I need them but I can’t keep turning to them when there is a chance I can get through without them. So I lay down and tried for sleep. To be honest, I didn’t think it was working, it seemed to me that I was just lying there with rubbish from all over the place hurtling through my mind. One minute I was in the present thinking about Adams need for a laptop and the next I was way back replaying thing from my past, things that I had no reason to even think of, I kept telling my brain to shut up, to just sleep, but it just ran off on its mad journey again. I remember lying there saying in my head over and over “sleep”, which usually worked, but it didn’t feel that way, so I looked at the clock, 7:10am, I had to have been asleep even though I didn’t know it. I lay for what felt like another second and the alarm rang, another 20 minutes lost. I hate nights like that as they seem to leave you more tired than if you had just given in and got up, I know that MST can cause vivid dream, but I have never found it a problem even when I first started taking them, yet I suppose that type of feeling of being awake, yet actually asleep fits the bill.

So here I am with my third round of med with the increased level of MST and I actually do feel that bit better for it, the pain levels are lower and that feeling of my muscles being so tense that they are going to explode, well it did appear earlier, but only for a short time and then it slowly vanished. Right now I feel once more a little sleepy, but it isn’t unpleasant, it’s has a strange kind of comfort inside it, I won’t be talking to the Doctor until Wednesday, so by then I hope to have a clearer answer, for now all I can do is keep testing and keep looking for an answer as to be honest I have had enough of never being even at a level I am at ease with, pain free is a fantasy, but comfortable, well that has to be a reality for all of us.

Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 28/07/12 – Seven steps

I always read all the comments over my different posts from the day before and I started writing a response to my post in this blog left yesterday. To date, I have always said that I know what works for me and is often the way it was as I wrote that I realised that I do know where the process of improving my life started and when I wrote it, it all pulled into place, the light-bulb went on…..