Zee Pain, zee pain ....

I have got to learn how to nap, that's all there is to it.

Sleeping meds don't do it.

And continuous sleep eludes me.

So obviously naps are the answer.

If only I could figure out how to incorporate them into my day.

I've never been a napper (just like I'm not a snacker, I guess).

I get up; I go about my day; I go to bed.

No in between with me, no sirree Bob.

That's just not my style.

I'm even that way with my eating habits (I sit down, I eat my meal. No snacks. No junk food.  Drives other people mad that I don't "indulge" or feel "seduced" by sweets or treats or ...)

Anyway, I digress.

My physiotherapist told me to drop my walking regime back to twelve minutes (six minutes out; six minutes back).  She suggested that my leg cramps were an indication of fatigue and I was doing "too much" and needed to cut back.

So yesterday morning, I walked only twelve minutes.  I still need to learn a proper pace so that my heart rate doesn't get higher than I can tolerate but that will come.

And I'm being careful to use the stair lift more frequently (not all the time you realize -- let's not get stupid about this, I do still need exercise).

But my leg cramps continue to increase and my hip pain is getting out of control (it is entirely possible that the steroid injection has run its course and I'm going back to my pain level of old -- unbearable).

The newest sleeping med that the doctor assured me would not cause depression has done just that so I've stopped taking it (besides the fact that it was not helping me sleep in more than two/two and half hour spurts anyway -- just kept me groggy enough to force me back to bed for a full eight hours).  My mood over the past couple of days has plunged desperately low so I've simply stopped taking the med because I can't risk getting into a deeper emotional hole -- I just don't want to go there!

It's important to me to be able to deal rationally with whatever comes my way and I can't do that if I'm depressed so obviously, sleeping meds of any kind are out of the question for me on a regular basis.

I will go back to resorting to assistance occasionally -- but only very occasionally when I need to be knocked out (if that's possible, through the pain).  Seems to me that each one we've tried has "worked" for the first couple of nights and then quickly ceased its effectiveness because of my pain level.

So, it also seems to me that I should be able to resort to taking a sleeping med once in a while when I need a good night's sleep.  I just can't take the damned stuff on a continuous basis because for some reason they screw up my brain in a particularly negative way (the one that didn't have that effect, unfortunately causes weight gain ...).

All I can say is, I am oh so grateful that I know my body as well as I do and that I am intelligent enough to pick up the signs of these responses as quickly as I do.  I shudder to think of the possible consequences if the opposite were true, and I just went merrily about and took any one of these poisons until they worked their way to the inevitable end.

And thank God for the TENs machine ...