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truepennyThe good news is: the pramipexole, on first contact, works approximately a million times better than the ropinirole and does not make me queasy also too as well. I was able to go to sleep at 10 last night, instead of four this morning.
The bad part of the good news is: I still slept badly. Although I feel a lot better rested this morning, despite being awake from two to three-thirty. And I may have found a new wetware hack: at least for me, at least last night, BenGay worked to alleviate the RLS symptoms. My best guess is that it gave the nerves in my right thigh some REAL INPUT to work with, so they could quit manufacturing sundogs. And the good part of the bad part of the good news is: as I get accustomed to it, I can increase the dose of pramipexole. The doctor started me out with one 0.125 mg tablet. I can eventually go up to as much as four. So if one tablet helps this much, two tablets may actually let me sleep like a (semi-)normal human being again.
The bad news is: dealing with all of this seems to have used up my supply of coping skills for today.
ETA: the sleep clinic called with my bloodwork. Everything's fine except my ferritin. It's at something-teen, and they'd like to see it at fifty or over. So up with the iron supplement! (And the Vitamin C and the fiber and ...)
ETA (2): Okay, the well-rested thing was only temporary. Drat.
The bad part of the good news is: I still slept badly. Although I feel a lot better rested this morning, despite being awake from two to three-thirty. And I may have found a new wetware hack: at least for me, at least last night, BenGay worked to alleviate the RLS symptoms. My best guess is that it gave the nerves in my right thigh some REAL INPUT to work with, so they could quit manufacturing sundogs. And the good part of the bad part of the good news is: as I get accustomed to it, I can increase the dose of pramipexole. The doctor started me out with one 0.125 mg tablet. I can eventually go up to as much as four. So if one tablet helps this much, two tablets may actually let me sleep like a (semi-)normal human being again.
The bad news is: dealing with all of this seems to have used up my supply of coping skills for today.
ETA: the sleep clinic called with my bloodwork. Everything's fine except my ferritin. It's at something-teen, and they'd like to see it at fifty or over. So up with the iron supplement! (And the Vitamin C and the fiber and ...)
ETA (2): Okay, the well-rested thing was only temporary. Drat.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-12 02:00 am (UTC)One of the side effects of my treatment for TB in the early '90s was that it permanently screwed up my body's ability to absorb B vitamins, which ultimately resulted in an iron deficiency -- not because I wasn't getting enough iron, but because I wasn't absorbing enough B vitamins and thus my body couldn't *process* the iron that it was getting. (I discovered this when I tried to give blood, go figure.) When I talked to the good people at Community Pharmacy about this, they said "Oh, you need the Stress-B complex that the Willy St Co-op sells" -- it's a B-complex with iron and C. And it works for me; I'm still on it, in fact.