August 7, 2014

  • A few weeks ago, I went back to my sleep specialist for the first time in nearly a decade. The stimulants for my narcolepsy haven't been working much at all in quite a long time, so I wanted another sleep study and perhaps a change in medication.

    Yesterday I finally saw Dr. Hawa for the results of my MSLT and MWT. So the result is that, as before, I have normal overnight sleep and the only time I have any apnea is when I'm on my back. However, it's very mild at that, and I spend very little time on my back anyway.

    However, during the maintenance of wakefulness test (MWT) I fell asleep all four times, in an average of 16 minutes. On the second one I only stayed awake for 4 minutes, and that was on crazy amounts of stimulants!
    So we're going to try me on Dexedrine instead of Ritalin and Concerta, and hope that I can take less of it and stay awake without my blood pressure being so high.

    If that doesn't work, I might try modafinil again, but it can screw up birth control pills and I also had a bad experience with it a decade ago. The only other option is Xyrem, but I am sooo sensitive to sodium I think that would be dangerous for me. But I'll start with the dex and see what happens.