Get more sleep and avoid stress. That was the advice of the doctor who first diagnosed me. I thought he was nuts. If it was so easy to get more sleep and avoid stress, wouldn’t everyone do it?
Eight years later, I’m doing much better on both counts. It’s not like I get enough sleep every night, or avoid stress altogether, but I’m getting closer to enough sleep, and keeping my stress as minimal as possible. It’s not easy, and I certainly slip, but overall I feel that I’m succeeding on both the sleep and stress fronts.
That’s why it’s especially infuriating when I don’t get enough sleep through no fault of my own. What right does my body have to wake up at 5:30am on a Saturday for no reason? That’s not fair! After four nights of oddly vivid dreams it suddenly occurred to me that this may not be a coincidence. I did some counting and realized this could be related to the new med. A few minutes online proved me right: this is a common unlisted side effect. Great. Just great. So now what? When I don’t get enough sleep for several nights, my body starts to revolt. I get pre-flu-like symptoms and feel just lousy. If I still don’t get enough sleep, I usually get sick. Today I started to get the pre-flu-like symptoms. This is not a good sign, folks. If the problem were my own schedule, I’d simply go to sleep earlier. Instead, I fall asleep fine, then wake up feeling unrested. This med is screwing me there’s not a damn thing I can do about it… except stop the med. That’s not a great option. So I’ll keep going. With any luck, my body will adjust to the med and the elusive sleep will return. And if I’m really lucky, the med will even do the work it’s supposed to do in the first place!
And in the meantime, I’ll continue to stumble through my days. My mind is getting fuzzy, my body is weak, and there are big dark circles under my eyes. But if there’s one good thing about constantly feeling lousy, it’s that I’ve learned to fake health pretty well. When I get to work tomorrow, no one will be the wiser. Unless this continues. By next week, it’ll be pretty damn obvious.
Note: Yes, I know that “elusivisity” is not a real word. If I’m going to be sleep-deprived, I might as well get to make up some fake words, right?
Chronic Rants 
It’s not a fake word, it’s a *neo-logism* – that is, simply a new formation – a *new* word! Somebody “made up” every single word we use at some point, so why shouldn’t we be able to, too? 😉