Insomnia strikes again

Can't sleep. Again. I have been like this as long as I can remember, although my mother claims I slept fine as a baby. Tony is a big part of my sleeping trouble. About three or four months before he was diagnosed, he started needing to go out in the middle of the night (one of the most obvious symptoms of diabetes), and my sleep was way out of whack until he went on insulin.

I'm one of those people who has trouble falling asleep and staying asleep (and, of course, falling asleep again). In the mid-1980s, I tried an experiment where I used self-hypnosis tapes to get myself in a pattern where I slept only four and a half hours a night (this was based on the 90 minute sleep cycle most people have); after 3 cycles, I would wake up easily, and I was pretty alert. I did that for almost a year, and accomplished a lot, but I think it made the overall sleep problem worse, not to mention that what made me stop was that my arthritis was getting worse, too.

I eventually got back to where I was getting at least six hours most nights, when Tony developed his bladder problem in June, and that set up another problem, what with the blood sugar crashes and so on. I couldn't sleep because I was afraid he'd have a crash and I wouldn't wake up, and now that he's stabilized, more or less, HE'S not sleeping at night. Part of his problem is almost certainly his skin condition; he's not scratching as much as I expect him to, but he has trouble getting comfortable. The last round of antibiotics doesn't seem to have done much, so on Tuesday, we're back to the vet for his biopsy. I have to trim all of the mats he's developed from the "extreme" shedding this thing causes, and he's going to look like hell. In the past week, he's lost fur on his face for the first time, so he's nowhere near looking his best. His mood seems good, anyway, and since he finished the antibiotic, his appetite is better than it's been since spring.

But he keeps waking me between 2-4 AM. It takes me an hour or so to fall asleep, so it seems as if I only had a few minutes of sleep before he's bouncing against my bed, wanting to go out.
My short-term memory and general recall have been taking a beating from menopause, and the lack of sleep is compounding the problem. Just tonight, I had to stop myself from freaking out because I thought I had lost a set of essays that needed to be graded. It turns out that I returned them on Monday.

I'm taking another shot at sleep now. I really just wanted to update about the biopsy.

How do you deal with frustration?

Well, I tend to do it badly in some circumstances, but there are a few where I really shine, if I do say so myself. For example, when one of my students needs something explained in a dozen different ways before he or she understands, I stick with it until I see the lightbulb going on, no matter how long it takes. This ability is particularly valuable when it comes to dealing with Tony's problems. I mentioned in my last post that he was having blood sugar crashes. After talking with both his vet and another doctor in the practice, we decided to take him off the Royal Canin Urinary SO and put him back on Lamaderm. I had taken him in because he seemed to have injured his right hind leg, but they checked him out on all fronts, which I always appreciate. It makes me wonder why I can't find a doctor for myself who is willing to take the time to cover all the bases (of course, I haven't really been looking, since I'm without health insurance -- for the last 4 years!-- so there's no point, but still . . .).

The results of their examination? Tony has a mild ear infection, which means a daily ear washing; his skin condition has spread from his stomach to other areas; his weight is down to 10.5 pounds; and he's developed osteoarthritis in his knee. At the moment, the tendon on his kneecap is "subluxated," meaning that it's come out of the shallow groove it's supposed to sit in. Dr. Campbell tried for several minutes to pop it back into place, but it wouldn't cooperate. Tony, however, didn't even whimper when she was stretching his leg out and moving it around -- this after he started shrieking at home, which was why I rushed him to the vet in the first place.
So, he's now on Rimadyl twice daily (and probably permanently), along with a daily dose of Torbutrol, since his trachea collapse is bothering him a lot more, and an antibiotic. Do I need to stress the importance of getting health insurance for your pets? I wish somebody had told me about it when Tony first arrived.

Because of the quantities of pills involved, I asked Dr. Campbell to give me prescriptions for both drugs, but now I'm kind of sorry I did that rather than just have them dispense -- I thought I could save money on the Rimadyl by getting the generic Novox instead (it's about half the price), but it's been a real hassle, and I still don't have the prescriptions filled after a week! Hence the title of this post. First, the pharmacy (at Drs. Foster & Smith) has to have an actual prescription or one faxed from the vet, which I understand and actually agree with as a policy, but mailing the rx's delayed the order a few days, and then yesterday, Fed Ex failed to deliver, leaving a sticker on the front door instructing me to pick up the package before close of business or they would have to wait until Tuesday (Labor Day weekend, remember?) to try again. Unfortunately, I didn't go out the front door until 7PM. The sticker said that the attempt was made at 9:57AM. This is what ticks me off. I taught an 8AM class and was home by 9:45; my mother, sister, and brother-in-law were all home and awake, too, as were all three dogs. The doorbell never rang -- when it does, it triggers a mammoth barkfest -- and we couldn't have missed that, even if we didn't hear our extremely loud doorbell!

I would love to boycott FedEx, but that's pretty much out of the question -- I do most of my shopping online. However, I am going to file a complaint with them. There's no excuse for what they did, and Tony will be out of his meds before the shipment gets here. I'm guessing that the dogs frightened the driver (they bark over noises outside, and the neighbor was mowing, so we probably thought that was what they were barking at). The two Great Pyrenees sound like all the hounds of hell when they get going; if just their minor warning barks scared him, it's too bad he didn't ring the bell. He probably would have lost control of his bladder over the ruckus that raises, a thought that I find very satisfying right now.

I hate to think that Tony might have to suffer even for a minute because of FedEx. I think that I'm going to start favoring businesses that use UPS. It's not a boycott, but it's the best I can do, and my frustration really needs some kind of outlet.

We're Baaack

We took a brief hiatus (it was the end-of-term grading frenzy), but now we're back. And for once, Tony is back to "normal." He ate breakfast today, early enough so that he got his shot before noon, and he's been awake since around 9AM (with a couple of short naps), which is a vast improvement over the last couple of weeks. In fact, until today, August has been a lousy month. Introducing the new food has produced several problems, including his first blood-sugar crashes ever, a scary experience for all of us. He has, as predicted, been drinking and urinating more -- both of which can affect blood sugar.

A complete aside: I just glanced over at my Zemanta feed, and for some reason, it's suggesting a bunch of images and links connected to Napoleon. Hmm. Ahh, now it's showing something interesting, a chart about sugar consumption.

Image via Wikipedia

The high-fructose corn syrup band is rather telling, I think. I got into a discussion with some students in my summer composition class about HFCS, back around the Fourth of July. Actually, what brought this up was somebody's comment on recycling. Back in "the day" (and what exactly does that colloquialism mean?), we bought our Coke in 8-packs of 16 oz. returnable glass bottles. These were pretty heavy, so we only had soda, of any kind, on holidays and other special occasions. All of these were sweetened with real sugar (and tasted so much better than the HCFS stuff you get nowadays, I can't believe people drink as much soda as they do now), which was a problem in the early '70s when there was a big crop failure and sugar prices went through the roof (the price of a Milky Way went from a dime to a quarter overnight. Sigh). Enter HCFS. I don't remember when the glass bottles were phased out, but all of a sudden, they were gone, and the more expensive cans and plastic bottles were all you could get. These were also significantly lighter in weight, so it wasn't such a big deal to pick some up on an ordinary day, and I made the argument that this was an important factor in the rising rate of HCFS consumption, as well as in landfill density. The kids couldn't believe that there had been an effective recycling program in place, one that was jettisoned without a thought to the consequences. But the consequences are exactly what the soft-drink companies want, aren't they? They moved more product, at a higher price (and lower cost, so far more profit), they cut down on labor costs and processing of the bottles, and now people drink soda at every meal. It couldn't have worked out better if they had planned the crop failure themselves!

The really insidious thing about HCFS is that it has found its way into all sorts of products that don't need sweetening in the first place, things like dog food, for example (as I noted in my 6/16/09 post about Ol' Roy's Dinner Rounds, which was Tony's favorite food up until he was diagnosed with diabetes). Now, the corn syrup producers can run all of the informational ads that they want, but I'm here to tell you, there's something morally wrong with people who would knowingly hook a dog on their product by sweetening it. You notice that I didn't complain about whatever the effects may be on people? I don't have a problem with that: people can choose for themselves, but our dogs rely on us not to feed them things that will lead to serious health problems like diabetes. Yeah, I still feel guilty about my role in Tony's condition.

Am I saying that HCFS causes diabetes? Not really. It may very well do so, but this is probably going to be one of those research topics that's going to result in a lot of junk-science articles about studies that were financed by corn-syrup producers. We may never know the truth.

Check out those ads on Youtube! Then check out all the responses. DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!