Health Stuff ... Ugh

I had high hopes that I'd be posting more these days, but so many things seem to be getting in the way.  Potty training, dealing with Asperger's/PDD-NOS, and just the day to day stuff keep me busy enough.  Unfortunately, I have had a few health issues I've had to deal with that are gumming up the works even more than usual.

First off, my soon-to-be former psychiatrist suggested I undergo another sleep study (I had one years ago that no one seems to have the results of ... *sigh*) to make sure we were still dealing with the same problem.  So I did that.  First, it was a night away from my both my kids for the first time ... looking like this:

It was tough to sleep with all that on me, particularly with the breathing sensor up my nostrils.  Oh, and the bed was essentially a slab of concrete covered with a lightly quilted fabric.

Then, I spent the majority of the next day looking like this:

And taking five 20+ minute naps at two hour intervals.  The waking time was particularly difficult because I had almost no cell phone reception and absolutely no access to the internet.  I wasn't allowed to sit in bed (since I wasn't allowed to nap between naps) and there was only an uncomfortable conference-room style chair as my other seating option.  Last time I went through the sleep study I LOVED it; I was an expert napper and wasn't constantly on-the-go in my everyday life.  Now, I am almost always moving.  It's not always productive movement, but between picking up after the kids, trying desperately to keep up with the house, scraping together meals that are healthy, and - most importantly - trying to give the kids a happy, fun childhood I feel like I'm constantly in motion.  To have to sit with little to do all day was a weird form of torture.  (Sad that this is my problem, isn't it?  I feel horrible even whining about this.)  I came home at the end of it, in an impressive showing of snow, and missing the kids like crazy; I pretty much burst into tears when I came into the door.

Which brings me to another health issue ...

In preparing for this sleep study, I had to stop my beloved Ritalin for a week.  As a mom who regularly gets between five and seven hours of sleep a night, it was a rough journey to say the least - lots of falling asleep while attempting to read books to the kids.  So needless to say, I was pretty bummed when I finished up the sleep study and ended up developing more health problems that have me not wanting to take much medication, including Ritalin.  After having been on a slew of meds for months and months, I'm now down to just one, for better or worse.  So now, on top of being tired, I am also more distracted with a widely variable mood (read: "I don't get much done, and I've been really weepy lately.").  So there's that.

Oh, and just to add to the fun ...

On Thanksgiving Day 2011, I all of a sudden started having a high-pitched ringing in my right ear.  It got louder with loud sounds, and on top of that I felt like my hearing had been compromised somehow.  Then I started to have occasional dizzy spells, a couple so bad that I got nauseous and had to lie down with my eye mask on.  My father-in-law (Hi, Chris!) has Meniere's disease, so I was aware that these were similar, but not identical, to the symptoms of this disease and after the ringing didn't stop and my hearing didn't improve, I saw an ear, nose, and throat specialist.  After some tests, a round of steroids, and additional observation on my part, my doctor concluded before Christmas that I had high pitched hearing loss because of some nerve damage, though from what I am unsure, and that the ringing likely wouldn't go away and my hearing wouldn't likely return to full-strength.  Armed with that knowledge, I tried to just ignore it and, largely, it worked.

Then on January 14th, I all of a sudden got dizzy again.  Not enough, mind you, to restrict me to the couch, but enough to slow down all my movements and make even little tasks a bit difficult.  The dizzy spells from 2011 were brief, only an hour or so long, but the dizziness this time didn't go away for about two whole days. Back to the ENT for me, and this time he said in light of the persisting (both the ringing and hearing loss were still there) and additional (low-grade, long-lasting dizziness) symptoms I was likely experiencing one of two things: either a Meniere's variant or a migraine variant - both being variants because neither was presenting in a classical way.

Since he is an ENT and since the nurse had already started me on a low-sodium diet a day or two earlier, a diet that was providing relief from the dizziness, he suggested I keep on a low-sodium diet (2000 to 2200 mg. of sodium a day or less) and see if that helped keep the dizziness at bay.  If it mostly did but not all the way, diuretic tablets could also help and he would be happy to help me procure those.  If the diet didn't help, then he said he'd suggest pursuing relief from a migraine variant standpoint and seek out this particular drug.

So I'm currently trying to figure out how to live a low-sodium lifestyle, and I'm not going to lie, it's a bit daunting.  Some of my favorite foods are high-sodium offenders, namely movie theatre popcorn and lasagna, and giving them up will be tough.  Some foods I thought would be okay turn out to be almost out of the question: our current go-to bread has 5% of your daily sodium intake in ONE slice ... meaning a sandwich would be at the bare minimum 10% of my allotted sodium, a figure I'm just not okay with; my favorite tortillas have 21% of your daily recommended sodium in ONE tortilla - I usually eat two when we have tacos; even Cheerios are higher than I was expecting - 7% in a one cup serving without milk.  Oh, and milk ... that has sodium too.  And forget about eating out; some places don't have nutritional information available and those that do are often so depressing it's ridiculous.  (Want to see what I mean?  Check out Applebee's nutritional stats ... just the sodium column alone will make you cringe.)

So my health has been keeping me busy, to say the least.  I'm trying so hard to keep myself going and being the best mom I can be to the two best kids in the world.  (Yes, I am biased.  Any mom would say the same about her own children.)  Hopefully once I get this all figured out, though, our lives will be much healthier for the long haul.