N.B. Feel free to skip portions surrounded by [brackets], as these represent tangents and, at times, diatribes.
In Episode 6, I discussed my recent identification of a heretofore "noxious" weed (in my estimation) in my yard. The tenacious thing pops up in all my garden beds and, as much of my lawn is uninitentionally turned over to weeds (because I don't have the energy to work it the way I want to), this monster grows to as high as 4 feet in the "prairie field" behind my house. I have precious little sunlight in my yard, which sits on the northeast-facing slope of an Appalachian mountain. The sun sets early on my house, like 4 p.m. So I know my sunny zones, one of which is a stretch along the northern woods where certain patches enjoy daylong sunlight that flows over the house's roof, past its shadow, and into that narrow strip before my yard ends at the wooded (and wonderfully natural) lot next doors. Other spots, other than a 20 x 20 patch just in front of the house and before 100-foot spruces block it. This is completely extraneous information, but I do try to describe my setting now and then, since most of The Mary Dell Show, in homage to its precursor (see the Pilot Episode for the history of the show) will be devoted to herbs, plants, mushrooms, and such. At least I hope so. Medical problems are cropping up--pun intended--at an alarming rate. These topics occur to my rambling brain during ramblings in my small, mostly wooded 1/2 acre lot, and sometimes the surrounding woods owned by my neighbors, who don't mind.
But we're talking about mugwort, right? Oh, the ADD! Anyway, these weeds are easy to pull up; often, I rip out a foot or more of the endlessly branching and shooting roots, but the labyrinthine growth of those runners has been impossible to foil, and I refuse to resort to toxic chemicals.
The plant is not unattractive. In fact, after purchasing some Shasta daisies and plopping them in one of my beds (before figuring out that gorgeous native species grow wild all around), I noticed that their leaves and those of this invasive weed are nearly identical--sort of bluish-green due to backs that are nearly white, almost lacy in their deeply cut edges and in attractive sprays, and hardy. And invasive. Were they relatives of Shasta daisies, I wondered and allowed the weeds to reach florescence, and, alas, no pretty daisy-like blooms appeared. The tops sported numerous small, red-tinged, woefully unimpressive flowers. The war was on--me versus this unnamed weed--and it's now waged for eighteen years, since I bought the place in 1993. I've won a few battles, but only temporarily. Tenacity knows no equal.
I'm now ceding, however. Oh, I might still try to keep mugwort out of my beds, but I'm going to let it proliferate freely in the "meadow."
I discovered the name of this wonder plant, appropriately enough, during a fit of insomnia. The drugs I've been on for this latest breathing/coughing problem include Prednisone, and I'm calling that the culprit. Two nights ago, I didn't try to shut my eyes before 5 a.m., and last night I went straight through the night, this time not remotely sleepy until 10:30 a.m., after which I gladly got a few hours of sleep. But this sleeplessness contrasts to many other inappropriate hours devoted only to sleep. Saturday I slept until 7:30 p.m., and the day before I'd slept most of the day away, when I really needed to go to work. I barely had the energy to check my emails and deal with any immediate concerns.
These are the weird issues confronting anyone who has chronic disease, and just when you think you've got a handle on them you'll end up with some other diagnosis that needs a different drug, and you'll be back to square one. Sleep has become a hideous issue for me. Sleep is controlling my life, not the other way around. When I'm not sleeping too much or too little, I'm thinking about sleep, worrying it's going to interfere with my quest to re-establish my professional life after becoming seriously ill with an adrenal disorder and unable to work, what methods I might employ to vanquish this foe, wondering when sleep is going to finally beat me down.
I assure you, I've always been an active person. Lying in bed, I'm fairly itching to get up, have a cup of tea and a stroll through the yard, get to work, see my boyfriend, you name it. But my body does not respond; it lies there as if comatose. It's the weirdest thing. Fortunately, I'm still able to force myself to get up when I absolutely have to, and that makes others around me suspicious about the other days--but the fact is, I despise this sleep pattern. I would love to see the morning, have a cup of tea, get to work at the time when everyone else is there, and then get home early enough to enjoy the yard and the dogs and the woods and the "cottage" which are the only things I'm working these days to preserve, as they alone in my "empty nest" give me deep, domestic satisfaction. I don't quite know what I'd do without that house and that land, where I know every plant growing or, if I don't, I find out what it is. Of course, figuring mugwort out took an inordinately long time, but that was because it had never piqued my interest. Just goes to prove the cliche, "Never judge a book by its," you know.
And then one night while browsing Cech's Medicinal Herbs, I happened upon a drawing I instantly recognized--my once-nemesis, the mug of wort--er, wort of mug? "Mug" in the common name possibly refers to the weed's use in beer before hops became popular--and because of its mild hallucinogenic properties, it probably made a kick-ass beer! The plant is used in cooking in some cultures, and I'm going to try some dishes in which it's recommended. "Wort," of course, is the Old English word for "plant"--for word nerds like me, see its etymology at http://etymonline.com/?term=wort
Actually, I'd been thinking about finding out more about the weed anyway, having come upon the hobby of herbalism a few years ago somewhat by accident by the weeds that grow in my yard because I don't have the energy to "properly" care for it. Now, of course, I embrace a more natural look and am seeking ways to replace my lawn with low-growing green plants and multiple gardens with native and nursery plants--often the same, but I'm still attached to a FEW hybrids--I'm not a perfect person. Example: Deep yellow plumes of several species of goldenrod bloom beside patches of mugwort in the meadow. It finally dawned on me while ripping mugwort from the garden bed along my stone wall that it could be an interesting plant. Little did I know I was about to hit the jackpot.
My sleep issues have led me to undergo two sleep studies. The results say I have mild sleep apnea. But the specialist says my sleep problem is probably related to taking Effexor, which is now known to preclude, or cut down on, REM sleep. [Update 2013--New sleep tests in a new facility revealed that I'm having an average of 17 apneas/hypopneas every freakin' HOUR while I sleep--on CPAP but still breathless--more sleep studies to come.]
When I started taking Effexor in 1996 after a bout of clinical depression and undiagnosed years of moderate to high anxiety, it was a brand-new drug. I knew long-term results of its use could not be determined through clinical trials. Only time could do that. I knew taking it, and staying on it, would be a risk. I'd joke that I'd probably be senile by the time I was 50. Fortunately, that fate at least seems spared to me for now, though aphasia is happening much more frequently of late than I like (but also to others my age).
In my two sleep studies, I never reached REM sleep, which tells me I don't have restorative sleep for the first seven or eight hours I'm lying there. But if they'd kept me hooked up to their machines, I would probably soon have dropped into a deep sleep with vivid dreams. This is what happens to me almost every day. My body finally gets the mysterious benefit of REM sleep just when it's time for me to wake up.
The answer, of course, is that I should just go to bed a few hours earlier so the REM gets started earlier. But that's when the insomnia kicks in. In my sleep studies, I tossed and turned, my mind roiling practically the entire night. That is how I spend most of my nights rather than suffused in restorative slumber. The vicious cycle goes on and on. My circadian rhythm is reversed, which would be fine if I liked spending my life in the dark. I don't. I need sunshine and fresh air and walks in the woods, and my woods are far too rocky to stroll through in the dark. I prize my ankles too much to try that.
Dreams were one of the first side effects I noticed from the drug--I enjoyed cinematic dreams for several years after starting it, including an amazing lucid dream in which I was gliding (not hang-gliding, just my body gliding!) through a Grand Canyon-type landscape. I suddenly realized I was, in fact, dreaming, and I could control my body's speed and direction. I swerved back and forth, enjoying the colors and texture of the copper and gold rock walls. Then, I thought, "Hey. I can't get hurt! I can really make this fun!" I shot myself almost straight down to the cavern floor, and pulled back my non-existent throttle just before splatting face, swooping swiftly and elegantly past the river at the bottom, and then I woke up with something like a giggle. Effexor, I do love you. You saved me (mostly) from my anxiety and depression, and you've given me some of the best moments of sleep I've ever had.
[In a not entirely unrelated aside, I'll tell you that my first flying dream happened shortly after I got a check from my parents' estate, sometime in 1990. I erroneously believed I would never face money problems again. Since marrying at nineteen to a man who illustrated to me the joys (and subsequent pains) of credit, living beyond our means for some years, money problems plagued me, and I had a lot of shame about it. My father balanced his checkbook every night as he drank his martini in the living room, and he'd shared his frugal ways with me throughout the years of his life, giving me wonderful advice that I failed to follow. (I partially blame my ADHD, but, hey, I do have to take responsibility for a lot of it.) Thinking myself finally out of the morass, I felt free enough to fly. Sadly, mostly through my bad money management, that nest egg is gone. But I do have my "cottage" (I always use quotation marks, because it's kind of a wreck right now), and that little piece of land continues to excite and motivate me, and I experienced the most wonderful education a person could have thanks to those funds (and subsequent out-of-control student loans), so I don't feel I wasted the money, even though my salary now is not much more than I made as a secretary in Washington, DC, in the 1980s.]
Financial anxiety has only added to my general anxiety, and anxiety is a sleep-killer or, rather, sleep-screwer. My sleep isn't dead, but it's severely screwed. And when your sleep is screwed, so is your life, no matter how hard you're trying.
As I said, I used to be an active person. You have to be when you're the single mother of two small boys. And my older son's fascination with the wilds of West Virginia shortly after we moved to the mountains had us hiking Dolly Sods and Seneca Rock and going through Smokehole Caverns and the PawPaw Tunnel every chance we got. (My younger plodded along miserably behind us, complaining--though after a while he would become fully engaged. I was thrilled recently when he posted some photos of a hike with a girl through a part of Shenandoah.)
As a thirty-year-old, I moved my kids and me from Washington, DC, to our home in the hills. I enrolled as a full-time college freshman at the local university with the dream of teaching. Finally, I would face my fears about standing in front of a classroom, and I would do what I always knew I was meant to do. Now that I'd lost my parents, I told myself my fear of the classroom was silly and childish. I knew I had only myself to depend on, and I wanted a future that was financially secure. \
[How ironic is that now, after graduating with honors and going on for two master's degrees and half the coursework of a PhD, more or less, I am facing bankruptcy, with a hearing on October 24. But because being sick is being negligent according to the state university system that fired me, I lost the salary that would have kept me solvent and and would allow me to reach some dreams around the cottage and yard. Alas. I do sound like a kvetch, and I'm sorry about that. Still boils the blood now and then. Of course, the kids never saw the financial benefit of those efforts, either. They grew up so too fast!)]
I worked part-time at a local community college to keep a little money coming in, and I reared my two boys, both of whom had, well, challenges. My younger one was diagnosed early with ADHD and also had anxiety--he'd call me into his room at night, scared that the sun was about to explode or some such thing. They'd both taken their grandmother's death hard when they were 6 and 2 1/2, respectively, and it was also hard for them to live two hours away from their dad, though they went do his house every other weekend.
My academic advisor talked me into going into college teaching rather than secondary school certification, as I'd originally planned. While I don't regret following her advice because of the fantastic experiences I had and the knowledge I gained, because of the job market in Appalachia and the bizarre turns my health has taken, becoming certified to teach would have been a very good thing for me--and nothing precluded me from doing both--an education degree with a minor in English, then on to grad school in English. And then I'd have more choices. Instead, I switched to a strict English major. Lately, I've wanted to teach preschool or kindergarten or first grade--I never realized that I loved little kids--I thought my relationship with my own was so fun (most of the time) because they were MINE. But then I inherited three bonus children with my significant other, and I adored the years when they were still kids and teens. As I found with my own, kids are the most difficult when they reach adulthood--they know everything now and blame you for everything, and their problems are WAY bigger than they were when they were little. But hopefully they all come to their senses and realize their folks were only doing the best they could for them, that they did things with love, but that they are human beings with human failings and those made them imperfect as parents. And maybe they'll come to realize they were pretty darned lucky, in the grand scheme of things. So very many children today are not..
Ah, ADD. Anyway, my undergraduate academic advisor told me told me I could get an assistantship that would pay for my Master's Degree and PhD. So after getting my BA, I began commuting an hour and a half to the closest university that offered an MA in English. The commute covered some of the highest spots in these Appalachians, with the interstate often snow-covered, with only one lane open, or shrouded in thick fog. Now, I realize this is sort of sounding like "oh, poor me," or "I had to walk 25 miles through the snow to go to school," but I'm really just trying to convey the fact that I'm not lazy or unmotivated or someone would could ever enjoy being a couch potato and living off the dole--I actually think very few persons on disability are of that ilk, or at least the ones who really need that assistance should not be deprived of it because of frauds. So, the grad school schedule was pretty tight; I didn't have time to socialize much with the other TAs, but I did when I could, and I came home each night and made my kids dinner from scratch until, when they hit their teens, one of them told me his friends had a freezer full of frozen meals from which they selected each night's dinner. After that, I have to admit, I cut down on the cooking. I even did a workout video most days in those years--Buns of Steel Arms and Abs. Ha. And my favorite thing to do for entertainment is dancing to good funk and other dance music, which is not exactly a sedentary activity. Unfortunately, I can barely get through one song when I used to dance the whole night away and, hey, I'm not THAT old yet! So, no, I absolutely do not welcome this new reality of low energy and poor sleep.
I had wanted to teach English since I was a kid, but anxiety about public speaking and being in charge. And since I could only then picture myself teaching high school English, I knew I'd be scrutinized by the very group that had ostracized me in my teens for being an overly shy, awkward, tall, skinny girl with stringy hair and braces. I'd always been a terrific follower, and sometimes landed in leadership roles by default, but to actually be in charge? I just didn't have the confidence for that, which kept me from going to college at the "normal" age--if I didn't have the nerve to teach, what was the point? Now, friends told me I was crazy at thirty to get a degree in English; I should go for something more lucrative. But reading is my first non-human love, flowing from my mom cuddled beside me as she'd read You Aren't My Mother! or The Story of Ping out loud with appropriate drama and joy. Before long, naturally, writing stories became my obsession even before I could even write--I'd dictate them to my mom who would type the lines at the bottom of a blank piece of paper, and then I'd illustrate the action. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt (really, not in the Mormon way I used to parrot this phrase), that I would be a great writer one day. I was a nerd who actually loved school (for the most part--I could get bored easily and the aforementioned torment was brutal, though I did have a good cadre of fellow Big Bang-type friends). I was blessed with excellent teachers from kindergarten up, and I wanted to inspire kids the way they did me.
And now that I again had the means to realize these dreams--thanks, again, to ADD, I couldn't IMAGINE spending another day in a classroom after thirteen years of forced service. I'd always been college bound, but when the option of a wide, open, unchartered future opened up, I knew I didn't want to sit at a desk and daydream out the window, as I'd done so often throughout my school years.
But a few years in the school of hard knocks--or even just plain old adulthood--changed my mind. Yes, it was possible to write the Great American Novel without a college degree, but I hadn't turned out to be an S. E. Hinton, publishing a wildly popular novel at age 16, so I had to realize that dream might be, er, deferred. I'd also deferred the only other career choice I'd seriously considered--teaching English, as earlier described.
Now, I wanted to use the money I inherited from their estate--not a huge amount, but enough to give me some choices--to honor my parents and make them proud (if they had any awareness of me at all from "the other side") of their very bright but wayward daughter. As my dad told me the Christmas I was given $1,000 from my maternal grandmother's estate and I wanted to use it to take a college class rather than doing something practical with it like paying off debt he knew I had, "Education is never a waste." My brilliant father had failed in the hardware business, graduated with a chemisty degree, got in on the ground floor of electronic engineering, received a naval commendation for a fire detection device used on their ships, received a patent for a radar altimeter that was installed in every commercial aircraft flying in the early 1960s. My witty, language-loving mother who always regretted not going to college, she'd told me time and time again.
And I could combine my dream of a college degree with one that also connected to my parents, so recently dead that I could not let them go in my thoughts for any one moment--the dream of living in the mountains. We'd gone to a charming mountain resort every summer as a family between my age 8 and into adulthood. I could move the kids away from the stressful city and into the fresh air of the country--I hadn't smelled the paper mill yet. I'd been having scary hypnogogic hallucinations--an actual parasomnia related to the Incubus myth)--as I was falling asleep since the night after my mother died, and I figured it was just despair and anxiety about the future that was causing them--which I'm sure contributed but are apparently not the only causes, as I have a full history of parasomnias and now (in 2013, during an update of this post) have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and will be undergoing more tests for narcolepsy or other sleep disorders. I definitely needed a change.
I had taken an English class now and then while still married. In fact, it was on a Saturday afternoon, coming home from a novel-writing class at University of Maryland at age 25, when I found my then-husband, a big, rednecky sort of guy, crying on the couch. My first thought was that he'd lost another job. He'd lost seven in the seven years we'd then been married. But he said to me, "Your father is dead."
I'll spare you the tears and shock that followed. My life, in fact, seems sharply divided at that moment. Before my father died, I believed I lived a charmed life. The fact that my first son had been born two months early for no known reason (I now believe it had to do with my adrenal disorder) and suffered physical effects that continue to plague him today had never struck me as a tragedy. Of course, it WAS a tragedy, but it came in the package of my beautiful son, who in my eyes could not be more perfect. My sons were bringing life to my life; those first years of motherhood may have been hard, but they were just like being in love.
But my father? Dead? I'd talked to him just the day before about his camera. He told me I could borrow it if I was sure to put film in it before I gave it back. That was Dad. Ever frugal. But, hey, he was an engineer, and he had a very ordered mind. His camera always had film in it, and a spare cartridge besides. He didn't want to be caught with an empty camera, and he knew my propensity to a certain ADHD laxness about such things. Believe it or not, I do have some of my father's orderliness in me as well, though outward signs belie it. If I didn't, I believe anxiety and ADHD would have caved me in long, long ago.
Ah, this is the joy of blogging, this taking off on tangents. Though I have to say, "blogging" is not a particularly mellifluous word. It hasn't the same cache as essay, from Michel de Montaigne's title Essais, a collection of pieces that would try a variety of topics, a sort of mind-ramble that somehow manages to cohere. (A related word in English is "to assay," to test, or trial something, such as a chemical, determining its constituents.)
On the other hand, this is The Mary Dell Show, ostensibly my radio show to you a la my sixties childhood and the tape recorder and microphone of my big (wonderfully geeky) brother, who first coined the title and began recording my thoughts. So this isn't a blog or an essay, but if I had to choose one of those two terms, I'd choose the latter. It certainly has the rambling quality de Montaigne claimed as a key component.
And this is how my mind works during insomnia: It actively jumps from idea to idea, project to project, wish to wish. This, however, is far better than in 1996 during that period of clinical depression, when insomnia, instead, was a broken record of fears, worries about work, and general paranoid thoughts to the point of an over-active adrenal response. At least, I remember the pounding of my heart and the feeling that I was doomed and on the cusp of a very terrible event as I lay there watching the clock's hands move inexorably through the wakeful night.
So, in contrast, I'm rather enjoying my bouts of insomnia these days, except that I cognitively recognize they are interfering with my ability to wake in the morning and, disturbingly often these past couple of years, the entire next day. This, of course, is not conducive to a regular work schedule. Thank the heavens above for landing me where they have, at a wonderful non-profit agency doing good things for the disadvantaged in this region, and a place where our schedules are flexible as long as we get our jobs done. Yet, as I've said, I'd much rather show up at 8:30 a.m., get my work done, and get home in time for the garden than my daily struggle to make it in before it's dark. (That's largely an exaggeration, but it does happen. I told you, sleep controls me these days, not the other way around.)
And that gets me back to mugwort, the once dastardly weed taking over my yard that is now my best friend. Richo Cech of Horizon Weeds ... Ooops! That was a Freudian slip, given my column in an independent paper is Weed or Wonder? ... The company is Horizon Herbs, a site I highly recommend, not only for its products but for Cech's insightful writing and the charming illustrations by his daughter. As I was saying, Richo Cech describes the plant thus:
The breath, I've come to almost believe (as opposed to almost come to believe) is our sacred connection between the physical and the metaphysical--though I also believe that nothing is beyond the physical; it's all one. Yet that is no less marvelous, in my opinion, than the idea of a "different" reality. We simply do not have access to every layer of reality, and that gateway between wakefulness and sleep is what allows us into realms we are among but not consciously part of, most of the time, when we're awake.
It's difficult to discuss consciousness without sounding as if you're stoned, but I am not. The mind-brain connection and consciousness is a topic I've long been interested in, and I've read a lot of books on the topic. If I occasionally lapse into discussing those things, it's only because they continue to fascinate me.
Anyway, back to sleep: At this point, I'm willing to try anything. Ambien and Xanax do not help me fall asleep, and I worry about the side effects. I'm hoping to get a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea, though my test was inconclusive as to whether it will help. But my next, most hopeful strategem is to go in the yard, gather a mess of mugwort, lemon balm (melissa, another known sleep inducer that I planted and now grows rampantly lemony in my moist soil), and bedstraw, another wilding that creeps along the corners of my yard and which has been used through the ages to stuff pillows and mattresses. I'll then then hang these plants up to dry, and start making pillows. These will make great Christmas gifts. I know lots of other people who have sleep problems, part of living in this crazy, stressful society. What a nice thought that an an everyday companion in my yard has been used for millennia to solve one of my worst problems. In fact, mugwort is one of the nine sacred herbs as described in this overview of the many ways mugwort and humans have interacted through the years at http://www.nyctophilia.net/plants/mugwort.htm. The past can heal the present and the future if we let it!
Now, I assure you, I'm a skeptic about just about everything. But I've been reading enough about herbal medicine to know that the weeds growing all around us have marvelous healing properties and surprising chemical make-ups. And mugwort is a close relative of the plant from which absinthe is distilled, and it contains thujone, the same toxic (in large amounts) substance found in absinthe. So breathing in wafts of this plant probably does enhance sleep--and the mild hallucinogen can be blamed for the especially vivid and sometimes disturbing nature of dreams it may well induce.
A future episode of The Mary Dell Show will report on my dream pillows.
Thanks for indulging me in my insomnia on this meandering missive, and, always--
Sweet dreams!
In Episode 6, I discussed my recent identification of a heretofore "noxious" weed (in my estimation) in my yard. The tenacious thing pops up in all my garden beds and, as much of my lawn is uninitentionally turned over to weeds (because I don't have the energy to work it the way I want to), this monster grows to as high as 4 feet in the "prairie field" behind my house. I have precious little sunlight in my yard, which sits on the northeast-facing slope of an Appalachian mountain. The sun sets early on my house, like 4 p.m. So I know my sunny zones, one of which is a stretch along the northern woods where certain patches enjoy daylong sunlight that flows over the house's roof, past its shadow, and into that narrow strip before my yard ends at the wooded (and wonderfully natural) lot next doors. Other spots, other than a 20 x 20 patch just in front of the house and before 100-foot spruces block it. This is completely extraneous information, but I do try to describe my setting now and then, since most of The Mary Dell Show, in homage to its precursor (see the Pilot Episode for the history of the show) will be devoted to herbs, plants, mushrooms, and such. At least I hope so. Medical problems are cropping up--pun intended--at an alarming rate. These topics occur to my rambling brain during ramblings in my small, mostly wooded 1/2 acre lot, and sometimes the surrounding woods owned by my neighbors, who don't mind.
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| Mugwort, photo from Horizon Herbs |
But we're talking about mugwort, right? Oh, the ADD! Anyway, these weeds are easy to pull up; often, I rip out a foot or more of the endlessly branching and shooting roots, but the labyrinthine growth of those runners has been impossible to foil, and I refuse to resort to toxic chemicals.
The plant is not unattractive. In fact, after purchasing some Shasta daisies and plopping them in one of my beds (before figuring out that gorgeous native species grow wild all around), I noticed that their leaves and those of this invasive weed are nearly identical--sort of bluish-green due to backs that are nearly white, almost lacy in their deeply cut edges and in attractive sprays, and hardy. And invasive. Were they relatives of Shasta daisies, I wondered and allowed the weeds to reach florescence, and, alas, no pretty daisy-like blooms appeared. The tops sported numerous small, red-tinged, woefully unimpressive flowers. The war was on--me versus this unnamed weed--and it's now waged for eighteen years, since I bought the place in 1993. I've won a few battles, but only temporarily. Tenacity knows no equal.
I'm now ceding, however. Oh, I might still try to keep mugwort out of my beds, but I'm going to let it proliferate freely in the "meadow."
I discovered the name of this wonder plant, appropriately enough, during a fit of insomnia. The drugs I've been on for this latest breathing/coughing problem include Prednisone, and I'm calling that the culprit. Two nights ago, I didn't try to shut my eyes before 5 a.m., and last night I went straight through the night, this time not remotely sleepy until 10:30 a.m., after which I gladly got a few hours of sleep. But this sleeplessness contrasts to many other inappropriate hours devoted only to sleep. Saturday I slept until 7:30 p.m., and the day before I'd slept most of the day away, when I really needed to go to work. I barely had the energy to check my emails and deal with any immediate concerns.
These are the weird issues confronting anyone who has chronic disease, and just when you think you've got a handle on them you'll end up with some other diagnosis that needs a different drug, and you'll be back to square one. Sleep has become a hideous issue for me. Sleep is controlling my life, not the other way around. When I'm not sleeping too much or too little, I'm thinking about sleep, worrying it's going to interfere with my quest to re-establish my professional life after becoming seriously ill with an adrenal disorder and unable to work, what methods I might employ to vanquish this foe, wondering when sleep is going to finally beat me down.
I assure you, I've always been an active person. Lying in bed, I'm fairly itching to get up, have a cup of tea and a stroll through the yard, get to work, see my boyfriend, you name it. But my body does not respond; it lies there as if comatose. It's the weirdest thing. Fortunately, I'm still able to force myself to get up when I absolutely have to, and that makes others around me suspicious about the other days--but the fact is, I despise this sleep pattern. I would love to see the morning, have a cup of tea, get to work at the time when everyone else is there, and then get home early enough to enjoy the yard and the dogs and the woods and the "cottage" which are the only things I'm working these days to preserve, as they alone in my "empty nest" give me deep, domestic satisfaction. I don't quite know what I'd do without that house and that land, where I know every plant growing or, if I don't, I find out what it is. Of course, figuring mugwort out took an inordinately long time, but that was because it had never piqued my interest. Just goes to prove the cliche, "Never judge a book by its," you know.
And then one night while browsing Cech's Medicinal Herbs, I happened upon a drawing I instantly recognized--my once-nemesis, the mug of wort--er, wort of mug? "Mug" in the common name possibly refers to the weed's use in beer before hops became popular--and because of its mild hallucinogenic properties, it probably made a kick-ass beer! The plant is used in cooking in some cultures, and I'm going to try some dishes in which it's recommended. "Wort," of course, is the Old English word for "plant"--for word nerds like me, see its etymology at http://etymonline.com/?term=wort
Actually, I'd been thinking about finding out more about the weed anyway, having come upon the hobby of herbalism a few years ago somewhat by accident by the weeds that grow in my yard because I don't have the energy to "properly" care for it. Now, of course, I embrace a more natural look and am seeking ways to replace my lawn with low-growing green plants and multiple gardens with native and nursery plants--often the same, but I'm still attached to a FEW hybrids--I'm not a perfect person. Example: Deep yellow plumes of several species of goldenrod bloom beside patches of mugwort in the meadow. It finally dawned on me while ripping mugwort from the garden bed along my stone wall that it could be an interesting plant. Little did I know I was about to hit the jackpot.
My sleep issues have led me to undergo two sleep studies. The results say I have mild sleep apnea. But the specialist says my sleep problem is probably related to taking Effexor, which is now known to preclude, or cut down on, REM sleep. [Update 2013--New sleep tests in a new facility revealed that I'm having an average of 17 apneas/hypopneas every freakin' HOUR while I sleep--on CPAP but still breathless--more sleep studies to come.]
When I started taking Effexor in 1996 after a bout of clinical depression and undiagnosed years of moderate to high anxiety, it was a brand-new drug. I knew long-term results of its use could not be determined through clinical trials. Only time could do that. I knew taking it, and staying on it, would be a risk. I'd joke that I'd probably be senile by the time I was 50. Fortunately, that fate at least seems spared to me for now, though aphasia is happening much more frequently of late than I like (but also to others my age).
In my two sleep studies, I never reached REM sleep, which tells me I don't have restorative sleep for the first seven or eight hours I'm lying there. But if they'd kept me hooked up to their machines, I would probably soon have dropped into a deep sleep with vivid dreams. This is what happens to me almost every day. My body finally gets the mysterious benefit of REM sleep just when it's time for me to wake up.
The answer, of course, is that I should just go to bed a few hours earlier so the REM gets started earlier. But that's when the insomnia kicks in. In my sleep studies, I tossed and turned, my mind roiling practically the entire night. That is how I spend most of my nights rather than suffused in restorative slumber. The vicious cycle goes on and on. My circadian rhythm is reversed, which would be fine if I liked spending my life in the dark. I don't. I need sunshine and fresh air and walks in the woods, and my woods are far too rocky to stroll through in the dark. I prize my ankles too much to try that.
Dreams were one of the first side effects I noticed from the drug--I enjoyed cinematic dreams for several years after starting it, including an amazing lucid dream in which I was gliding (not hang-gliding, just my body gliding!) through a Grand Canyon-type landscape. I suddenly realized I was, in fact, dreaming, and I could control my body's speed and direction. I swerved back and forth, enjoying the colors and texture of the copper and gold rock walls. Then, I thought, "Hey. I can't get hurt! I can really make this fun!" I shot myself almost straight down to the cavern floor, and pulled back my non-existent throttle just before splatting face, swooping swiftly and elegantly past the river at the bottom, and then I woke up with something like a giggle. Effexor, I do love you. You saved me (mostly) from my anxiety and depression, and you've given me some of the best moments of sleep I've ever had.
[In a not entirely unrelated aside, I'll tell you that my first flying dream happened shortly after I got a check from my parents' estate, sometime in 1990. I erroneously believed I would never face money problems again. Since marrying at nineteen to a man who illustrated to me the joys (and subsequent pains) of credit, living beyond our means for some years, money problems plagued me, and I had a lot of shame about it. My father balanced his checkbook every night as he drank his martini in the living room, and he'd shared his frugal ways with me throughout the years of his life, giving me wonderful advice that I failed to follow. (I partially blame my ADHD, but, hey, I do have to take responsibility for a lot of it.) Thinking myself finally out of the morass, I felt free enough to fly. Sadly, mostly through my bad money management, that nest egg is gone. But I do have my "cottage" (I always use quotation marks, because it's kind of a wreck right now), and that little piece of land continues to excite and motivate me, and I experienced the most wonderful education a person could have thanks to those funds (and subsequent out-of-control student loans), so I don't feel I wasted the money, even though my salary now is not much more than I made as a secretary in Washington, DC, in the 1980s.]
Financial anxiety has only added to my general anxiety, and anxiety is a sleep-killer or, rather, sleep-screwer. My sleep isn't dead, but it's severely screwed. And when your sleep is screwed, so is your life, no matter how hard you're trying.
As I said, I used to be an active person. You have to be when you're the single mother of two small boys. And my older son's fascination with the wilds of West Virginia shortly after we moved to the mountains had us hiking Dolly Sods and Seneca Rock and going through Smokehole Caverns and the PawPaw Tunnel every chance we got. (My younger plodded along miserably behind us, complaining--though after a while he would become fully engaged. I was thrilled recently when he posted some photos of a hike with a girl through a part of Shenandoah.)
As a thirty-year-old, I moved my kids and me from Washington, DC, to our home in the hills. I enrolled as a full-time college freshman at the local university with the dream of teaching. Finally, I would face my fears about standing in front of a classroom, and I would do what I always knew I was meant to do. Now that I'd lost my parents, I told myself my fear of the classroom was silly and childish. I knew I had only myself to depend on, and I wanted a future that was financially secure. \
[How ironic is that now, after graduating with honors and going on for two master's degrees and half the coursework of a PhD, more or less, I am facing bankruptcy, with a hearing on October 24. But because being sick is being negligent according to the state university system that fired me, I lost the salary that would have kept me solvent and and would allow me to reach some dreams around the cottage and yard. Alas. I do sound like a kvetch, and I'm sorry about that. Still boils the blood now and then. Of course, the kids never saw the financial benefit of those efforts, either. They grew up so too fast!)]
I worked part-time at a local community college to keep a little money coming in, and I reared my two boys, both of whom had, well, challenges. My younger one was diagnosed early with ADHD and also had anxiety--he'd call me into his room at night, scared that the sun was about to explode or some such thing. They'd both taken their grandmother's death hard when they were 6 and 2 1/2, respectively, and it was also hard for them to live two hours away from their dad, though they went do his house every other weekend.
My academic advisor talked me into going into college teaching rather than secondary school certification, as I'd originally planned. While I don't regret following her advice because of the fantastic experiences I had and the knowledge I gained, because of the job market in Appalachia and the bizarre turns my health has taken, becoming certified to teach would have been a very good thing for me--and nothing precluded me from doing both--an education degree with a minor in English, then on to grad school in English. And then I'd have more choices. Instead, I switched to a strict English major. Lately, I've wanted to teach preschool or kindergarten or first grade--I never realized that I loved little kids--I thought my relationship with my own was so fun (most of the time) because they were MINE. But then I inherited three bonus children with my significant other, and I adored the years when they were still kids and teens. As I found with my own, kids are the most difficult when they reach adulthood--they know everything now and blame you for everything, and their problems are WAY bigger than they were when they were little. But hopefully they all come to their senses and realize their folks were only doing the best they could for them, that they did things with love, but that they are human beings with human failings and those made them imperfect as parents. And maybe they'll come to realize they were pretty darned lucky, in the grand scheme of things. So very many children today are not..
Ah, ADD. Anyway, my undergraduate academic advisor told me told me I could get an assistantship that would pay for my Master's Degree and PhD. So after getting my BA, I began commuting an hour and a half to the closest university that offered an MA in English. The commute covered some of the highest spots in these Appalachians, with the interstate often snow-covered, with only one lane open, or shrouded in thick fog. Now, I realize this is sort of sounding like "oh, poor me," or "I had to walk 25 miles through the snow to go to school," but I'm really just trying to convey the fact that I'm not lazy or unmotivated or someone would could ever enjoy being a couch potato and living off the dole--I actually think very few persons on disability are of that ilk, or at least the ones who really need that assistance should not be deprived of it because of frauds. So, the grad school schedule was pretty tight; I didn't have time to socialize much with the other TAs, but I did when I could, and I came home each night and made my kids dinner from scratch until, when they hit their teens, one of them told me his friends had a freezer full of frozen meals from which they selected each night's dinner. After that, I have to admit, I cut down on the cooking. I even did a workout video most days in those years--Buns of Steel Arms and Abs. Ha. And my favorite thing to do for entertainment is dancing to good funk and other dance music, which is not exactly a sedentary activity. Unfortunately, I can barely get through one song when I used to dance the whole night away and, hey, I'm not THAT old yet! So, no, I absolutely do not welcome this new reality of low energy and poor sleep.
I had wanted to teach English since I was a kid, but anxiety about public speaking and being in charge. And since I could only then picture myself teaching high school English, I knew I'd be scrutinized by the very group that had ostracized me in my teens for being an overly shy, awkward, tall, skinny girl with stringy hair and braces. I'd always been a terrific follower, and sometimes landed in leadership roles by default, but to actually be in charge? I just didn't have the confidence for that, which kept me from going to college at the "normal" age--if I didn't have the nerve to teach, what was the point? Now, friends told me I was crazy at thirty to get a degree in English; I should go for something more lucrative. But reading is my first non-human love, flowing from my mom cuddled beside me as she'd read You Aren't My Mother! or The Story of Ping out loud with appropriate drama and joy. Before long, naturally, writing stories became my obsession even before I could even write--I'd dictate them to my mom who would type the lines at the bottom of a blank piece of paper, and then I'd illustrate the action. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt (really, not in the Mormon way I used to parrot this phrase), that I would be a great writer one day. I was a nerd who actually loved school (for the most part--I could get bored easily and the aforementioned torment was brutal, though I did have a good cadre of fellow Big Bang-type friends). I was blessed with excellent teachers from kindergarten up, and I wanted to inspire kids the way they did me.
And now that I again had the means to realize these dreams--thanks, again, to ADD, I couldn't IMAGINE spending another day in a classroom after thirteen years of forced service. I'd always been college bound, but when the option of a wide, open, unchartered future opened up, I knew I didn't want to sit at a desk and daydream out the window, as I'd done so often throughout my school years.
But a few years in the school of hard knocks--or even just plain old adulthood--changed my mind. Yes, it was possible to write the Great American Novel without a college degree, but I hadn't turned out to be an S. E. Hinton, publishing a wildly popular novel at age 16, so I had to realize that dream might be, er, deferred. I'd also deferred the only other career choice I'd seriously considered--teaching English, as earlier described.
Now, I wanted to use the money I inherited from their estate--not a huge amount, but enough to give me some choices--to honor my parents and make them proud (if they had any awareness of me at all from "the other side") of their very bright but wayward daughter. As my dad told me the Christmas I was given $1,000 from my maternal grandmother's estate and I wanted to use it to take a college class rather than doing something practical with it like paying off debt he knew I had, "Education is never a waste." My brilliant father had failed in the hardware business, graduated with a chemisty degree, got in on the ground floor of electronic engineering, received a naval commendation for a fire detection device used on their ships, received a patent for a radar altimeter that was installed in every commercial aircraft flying in the early 1960s. My witty, language-loving mother who always regretted not going to college, she'd told me time and time again.
And I could combine my dream of a college degree with one that also connected to my parents, so recently dead that I could not let them go in my thoughts for any one moment--the dream of living in the mountains. We'd gone to a charming mountain resort every summer as a family between my age 8 and into adulthood. I could move the kids away from the stressful city and into the fresh air of the country--I hadn't smelled the paper mill yet. I'd been having scary hypnogogic hallucinations--an actual parasomnia related to the Incubus myth)--as I was falling asleep since the night after my mother died, and I figured it was just despair and anxiety about the future that was causing them--which I'm sure contributed but are apparently not the only causes, as I have a full history of parasomnias and now (in 2013, during an update of this post) have been diagnosed with sleep apnea and will be undergoing more tests for narcolepsy or other sleep disorders. I definitely needed a change.
I had taken an English class now and then while still married. In fact, it was on a Saturday afternoon, coming home from a novel-writing class at University of Maryland at age 25, when I found my then-husband, a big, rednecky sort of guy, crying on the couch. My first thought was that he'd lost another job. He'd lost seven in the seven years we'd then been married. But he said to me, "Your father is dead."
I'll spare you the tears and shock that followed. My life, in fact, seems sharply divided at that moment. Before my father died, I believed I lived a charmed life. The fact that my first son had been born two months early for no known reason (I now believe it had to do with my adrenal disorder) and suffered physical effects that continue to plague him today had never struck me as a tragedy. Of course, it WAS a tragedy, but it came in the package of my beautiful son, who in my eyes could not be more perfect. My sons were bringing life to my life; those first years of motherhood may have been hard, but they were just like being in love.
But my father? Dead? I'd talked to him just the day before about his camera. He told me I could borrow it if I was sure to put film in it before I gave it back. That was Dad. Ever frugal. But, hey, he was an engineer, and he had a very ordered mind. His camera always had film in it, and a spare cartridge besides. He didn't want to be caught with an empty camera, and he knew my propensity to a certain ADHD laxness about such things. Believe it or not, I do have some of my father's orderliness in me as well, though outward signs belie it. If I didn't, I believe anxiety and ADHD would have caved me in long, long ago.
Ah, this is the joy of blogging, this taking off on tangents. Though I have to say, "blogging" is not a particularly mellifluous word. It hasn't the same cache as essay, from Michel de Montaigne's title Essais, a collection of pieces that would try a variety of topics, a sort of mind-ramble that somehow manages to cohere. (A related word in English is "to assay," to test, or trial something, such as a chemical, determining its constituents.)
On the other hand, this is The Mary Dell Show, ostensibly my radio show to you a la my sixties childhood and the tape recorder and microphone of my big (wonderfully geeky) brother, who first coined the title and began recording my thoughts. So this isn't a blog or an essay, but if I had to choose one of those two terms, I'd choose the latter. It certainly has the rambling quality de Montaigne claimed as a key component.
And this is how my mind works during insomnia: It actively jumps from idea to idea, project to project, wish to wish. This, however, is far better than in 1996 during that period of clinical depression, when insomnia, instead, was a broken record of fears, worries about work, and general paranoid thoughts to the point of an over-active adrenal response. At least, I remember the pounding of my heart and the feeling that I was doomed and on the cusp of a very terrible event as I lay there watching the clock's hands move inexorably through the wakeful night.
So, in contrast, I'm rather enjoying my bouts of insomnia these days, except that I cognitively recognize they are interfering with my ability to wake in the morning and, disturbingly often these past couple of years, the entire next day. This, of course, is not conducive to a regular work schedule. Thank the heavens above for landing me where they have, at a wonderful non-profit agency doing good things for the disadvantaged in this region, and a place where our schedules are flexible as long as we get our jobs done. Yet, as I've said, I'd much rather show up at 8:30 a.m., get my work done, and get home in time for the garden than my daily struggle to make it in before it's dark. (That's largely an exaggeration, but it does happen. I told you, sleep controls me these days, not the other way around.)
And that gets me back to mugwort, the once dastardly weed taking over my yard that is now my best friend. Richo Cech of Horizon Weeds ... Ooops! That was a Freudian slip, given my column in an independent paper is Weed or Wonder? ... The company is Horizon Herbs, a site I highly recommend, not only for its products but for Cech's insightful writing and the charming illustrations by his daughter. As I was saying, Richo Cech describes the plant thus:
Mugwort, Common (Common Mugwort) (Artemisia vulgaris) (Ai-ye)Now hot on the trail of this weed's potential wonders, I found Web site after Web site describing mugwort's use in dream pillows. These pillows contain dried herbs ostensibly known to induce sleep and mild dreams (as well as some mixtures for more vivid dreams and even romantic dreams). This is based on the "science" of aromatherapy. I use quotation marks not because I'm not a believer, but because very few scientific studies have been done to prove these qualities. (That, thankfully, is changing, with NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine's now conducting clinical studies on commonly used herbs.) I'm not really a believer or disbeliever at this point, but it makes sense that what we breathe in while sleeping might have an effect on our sleep and dreams.
Family: Asteraceae
Hardiness: All temperate zones.
Herbaceous perennial, a vigorous spreader and self-seeder.Plant has soft leaves, pleasantly downy on the undersides. The herb is used to make Moxa, burned over acupuncture points to quicken the blood. Dream-inducer (dried leaf used to stuff pillows). Prefers sun to part shade and will grow in gravel, waste places or regular garden soil. (Emphasis added)
The breath, I've come to almost believe (as opposed to almost come to believe) is our sacred connection between the physical and the metaphysical--though I also believe that nothing is beyond the physical; it's all one. Yet that is no less marvelous, in my opinion, than the idea of a "different" reality. We simply do not have access to every layer of reality, and that gateway between wakefulness and sleep is what allows us into realms we are among but not consciously part of, most of the time, when we're awake.
It's difficult to discuss consciousness without sounding as if you're stoned, but I am not. The mind-brain connection and consciousness is a topic I've long been interested in, and I've read a lot of books on the topic. If I occasionally lapse into discussing those things, it's only because they continue to fascinate me.
Anyway, back to sleep: At this point, I'm willing to try anything. Ambien and Xanax do not help me fall asleep, and I worry about the side effects. I'm hoping to get a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea, though my test was inconclusive as to whether it will help. But my next, most hopeful strategem is to go in the yard, gather a mess of mugwort, lemon balm (melissa, another known sleep inducer that I planted and now grows rampantly lemony in my moist soil), and bedstraw, another wilding that creeps along the corners of my yard and which has been used through the ages to stuff pillows and mattresses. I'll then then hang these plants up to dry, and start making pillows. These will make great Christmas gifts. I know lots of other people who have sleep problems, part of living in this crazy, stressful society. What a nice thought that an an everyday companion in my yard has been used for millennia to solve one of my worst problems. In fact, mugwort is one of the nine sacred herbs as described in this overview of the many ways mugwort and humans have interacted through the years at http://www.nyctophilia.net/plants/mugwort.htm. The past can heal the present and the future if we let it!
Now, I assure you, I'm a skeptic about just about everything. But I've been reading enough about herbal medicine to know that the weeds growing all around us have marvelous healing properties and surprising chemical make-ups. And mugwort is a close relative of the plant from which absinthe is distilled, and it contains thujone, the same toxic (in large amounts) substance found in absinthe. So breathing in wafts of this plant probably does enhance sleep--and the mild hallucinogen can be blamed for the especially vivid and sometimes disturbing nature of dreams it may well induce.
A future episode of The Mary Dell Show will report on my dream pillows.
Thanks for indulging me in my insomnia on this meandering missive, and, always--
Sweet dreams!
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