Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Night Sweats

The last week or so I've been having night sweats.
In case you've gotten through life without experiencing this kind of thing, let me just say - it's unpleasant, but not dangerous. It's also kind of weird to suddenly have a haywire temperature regulation system that is haphazard in its activity. Just a bit unnerving.
Feeling a bit hypochondriac about it all, I thought I might see if it was related to the meds I'm on for the colitis (Dr Holt is always asking me about a string of side-effect symptoms), and whaddya know, loads of people get them, so I start reading one of the forum threads - where folks are trying to find correlations between their meds, the flare/remission, the intensity or onset of the sweats and like most human things - it's all over the shop. There's no single answer.

In a way, I did get an answer though.
He's a sample of the dozens of posts - this one by "BadGut" (the member names of these forums are brilliant) : 'When I first was diagnosed I suffered severe bed sweats at night - I used sleep on a towel and t-shirt which then I would have to get up 2-3x a night to change due to the wetness of it all. '
Wow. Other people wrote in too - changing PJs 3 times in a night, sleeping on towels, getting plastic sheets for the beds and so on. Mine are very mild in comparison! I am so lucky to have such manageable symptoms, and to effectively be in remission again. I have had flare-ups of only a month or two - some of these people have never had a remission! I really feel for them. I wouldn't be able to work, heck, I found it tough just to get my groceries done when I was in a full flare!

So basically I am now feeling very grateful today for what I do have, instead of worrying over what is really, in the scheme of things, some pretty inconsequential stuff. There was a great line in a film I watched on the weekend. It went something like "While you're trying so hard to claw back what you lost, a whole lot more can walk out the door". It was in No Country for Old Men - towards the end.

One of the forums suggested that as a first step to healing I should laugh more, everybody should laugh more. Excellent! How often does the Dr prescribe laughter?
I'm going to take the script to the Chemist and see if I can get some laughter in bulk. Can you get a discount if you show your medicare card?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had the sheet-soaking night sweats for a while when I had insomnia. Sucks, eh!
Take care, Cinderella.