Thursday, October 13, 2016

Stress + inadequate sleep + MdDS = bad things

It says on the MdDS Foundation website that there are several things that can make MdDS symptoms worse. Such as stress and lack of sleep.

I have firmly established that this is true in my case.



See, my symptoms started to wane about two weeks after the cruise. At first I didn't get symptoms in the morning, but they'd return when I got tired throughout the afternoon. Then they started staying away until the evening, and then I only noticed the symptoms when I crawled into bed at night. The bed was swaying when I went to sleep, but not in the morning when I woke up.

So essentially, the symptoms had vanished.

But during those two weeks that I did have symptoms, I fell behind on some of the work I should have been doing but was unable to due to the symptoms making me tired and unable to concentrate on anything for prolonged periods of time. So then, as my symptoms decreased, my brain had a jump-start reaction of "ohmygod we're falling behind on all this university stuff! RED ALERT! CALLING OUT ALL STRESS HORMONES, WE NEED TO GET SHIT DONE ASAP!"

...so I began stressing about all the stuff I didn't get done. And by then the pile of unfinished assignments and other stuff had grown so big, that I was overwhelmed and simply didn't know where to start. I prioritized the stuff that had deadlines coming up and rushed through those, but then my stress-riddled brain came to a halt. I didn't know how to divide the tasks at hand to make them more tolerable and organized, and so it seemed like this looming mountain of unfinished things and I had no idea how to chop it into smaller pieces.

In response, my brain shut down completely and pushed away the problem. So I didn't do anything. And the pile of unfinished work grew bigger and bigger.

Then I started losing sleep over the mountain of unfinished stuff.

I went to bed dead tired. I sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, and couldn't sleep for hours because there was a million thoughts racing through my head, and the mountain of unfinished uni work was screaming at me. Then I fell asleep some time later, and woke up in the morning, still stressed and not well-rested at all.

And the swaying and bobbing that had all but ceased to exist, well, it came back.

The symptoms aren't as bad as they were right after the cruise, but they're noticeable again. I feel the swaying when I sit down or stand still, and as an added bonus I feel the stress and lack of sleep in my body. It's like the tiniest sensation of nausea all the time, or this feeling that everything will fall apart, or that the walls are closing in on me. And I want to cry all the time for no reason.

So I sit here, feeling like the chair I'm in is swaying from side to side, with a strangling feeling in my throat and wanting to cry because I am so tired. And I can't get anything done, which adds to the stress and sleeplessness, which then feeds my MdDS symptoms. It's all going around in circles.

I should have been writing my thesis but I haven't. I should have been doing paperwork relating to a client I'm now seeing (as part of my speech-language pathology training), but I haven't. I should have been doing a lot of other things, but I haven't. It feels like the days are passing me by and I'm just sitting here, unable to grab a hold of the time that's going on and on without me.

In addition, there's some illness in the family that's taking its toll on my husband right now, and I don't want to add to the burden. I don't want to be another burden.

I know I should probably downshift and not try and accomplish everything at once, but I can't. I can't just say, "I won't be able to complete this assignment." I don't have that in me. So I forcibly push on.

Through the tiredness. Through the stress.

Through the near-tears moments.

Through the constant swaying and rocking that's starting to affect my concentration again.

I feel like my cognitive function is hanging by a thread. I find myself thinking about dropping out of university (in passing, when everything just feels like it's too much). I sometimes daydream about not having to think so much. Not having to learn so much. It's like my cognitive capacity is reaching its maximum. I feel like I can't learn any more things, and I just want the information flow to stop.

***


If I could step into a time vacuum where I could spend as much time as I wanted but no time would pass in real life, I would.



I would make a nest there, somewhere in between the streams of time, and spend a few cozy years not thinking about anything except for which novel to read next.

I used to love reading novels. Now I have all but stopped, because there isn't enough capacity in my brain to read anything besides what I have to. Last summer, it took me almost two months after the semester was done before I reached for a book. A new book, I mean. When I was bedridden with MdDS in June, I read a lot of books, but they were all ones I'd read before. It's like my brain couldn't handle any new information at the time. By the time I felt like reading something completely new, summer was over, and the cognitive overload was back.

***


These days, I find myself often wondering:
Is this what a burnout feels like?

I mean, I have been studying for almost six years now. First a BA in English and then another in speech-language pathology. Now I'm doing my masters degree and I am so tired all the time.

Perhaps the last straw to push me over my limit was a tiny little neurological illness like MdDS, which, in addition to the demands of the academic world was too much. It feels like my brain has raised its hands in surrender and given up.

I want to shout for help, but who would help me? How can this be helped, when if I drop out of any of my classes now I'll have to redo them in a year's time? It feels like time is the most valuable thing in the world, and I don't have enough of it.

What do I do, when there are so many demands placed on me, but I don't have the capacity to fulfill those demands?

I am behind on my deadlines and I don't even know where to begin untangling this mess of unfinished assignments.

And on top of that, I'm on the deck of my ship again. I thought it had gone away, but either I just had a few good days in between, or then the stress and insomnia got to me. Either way, I'm screwed.





Images from Pixabay.

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