CHIEF NOURISHER IN LIFE'S FEAST

"Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep..."

If I could sleep soundly eight hours each night, this illness would be fine. The days when I've slept well my energy is at about 70% of normal, which is pretty good in my book. The problem is, each time I think I have sleep figured out, with the right combination of supplements at the right time, and the ideal amount of exercise, etc, it lasts for about two or three weeks and then the insomnia kicks in again.

For the past week my record has been one good night's sleep out of two. Normally, I would have been at my naturopath's days ago, asking her to sort it out-- what pills to increase, what to decrease, when to take things. The only problem is we have been hit by two big snow storms, and Seattle does not plow the streets when it snows. My hilly street is iced over, and the naturopath is very far away over more streets that I'm sure are covered with ice.

So I have been trying to figure it out myself. The sauna has always been my guarantee for sleep, so I've been sure to go for a good sweat several times a week. Yesterday I trekked over icy sidewalks to get there, but I still slept only 6 hours last night.

Vitamin C, as well, usually helps me sleep, but now I'm maxed out on it and it's only helping a little.

Switching back to injecting my heparin twice a day has helped, but I am afraid to do this more than every other day. In the early morning I tried taking some extra B vitamins, and this helped-- I slept for a half hour afterwards, but once I took another dose, I couldn't go back to sleep.

I am an old hand at insomnia. I no longer panic or have those paranoid thoughts that usually kick in when you're up in the middle of the night. But it's still a drag. I can barely do anything when I haven't slept enough, and I go through the day like a zombie.

Of course, that's why it's called sick. It's not supposed to be fun or comfortable. My best moments on an exhausted day, like today, are when I look at it realistically and tell myself, well, this is just part of the process of getting better. The antibiotics have my biochemistry constantly in flux, and that causes insomnia, and that's all part of Lyme disease, which is, after all, what I have and what I'm working so hard to get over. Insomnia is basically just work for me.

Still, if I don't figure it out soon, I will trek down the autoparts store and buy chains for my car and I will brave icy bridges and risk accidents and getting trapped on blocked roads, I will do what it takes in order to get the naturopath.