Category Archives: Blog

Warm Wasn’t Working

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Warm wasn’t working. Not the warm, silky smoothness of a frothy bubble bath. Not the warm, soothing comfort of heated milk in a mug. Not even the warm afterglow of great sex. For that matter, not prescription or over-the-counter medications, either. Not meditation; not relaxation. Counting sheep? They all fled the scene as soon as I slipped into bed. Sleep was as elusive as those flighty sheep — it just wouldn’t come.

“Yawn,” you’re probably thinking. “Who can sleep these days?” One estimate puts the number of adult Americans with insomnia at sixty million. Read on, my friends, for what is different about this tale is not the problem, but the solution.

It had been over a year since I’d caught enough Z’s in one night to make the effort worthwhile. My low point was a twelve-minute nap, after which I was up for the day. It was time to take action. I started with a hypnotist — not some hocus-pocus charlatan, but a licensed practitioner who found me quite suggestible and guided me to a fairly deep trance in the very first session. Problem was, it wasn’t bedtime! Sure, in her plushy recliner and hushed office atmosphere, it was easy to let go. Factor in two twitchy dogs and a husband who could not maintain the same position (ramrod rigid) long enough for me to drop off, and my nighttime efforts met with dismal failure. I heard mice scratching in the walls. I felt every fold of the bed linen. I knew when a gnat landed on the roof of our barn across the street.

The hypnotist recommended a certain CD, which featured a woman’s gentle voice telling me how nicely I was drifting off to dreamland. By the third night I was reciting the script right along with the narrator. What I wasn’t doing was sleeping.

I was referred to a Brain Training Center and sent out-of-state for a quantitative electroencephalogram (fancy EEG). Never could I have predicted the results of that test, but they certainly explained my difficulty sleeping! I have very high beta activity throughout my brain – what they call in layman’s terms “busy brain.” Though there are no obvious physiological manifestations, my brain is hyper-alert all the time. It does not rest. It does not filter. It takes in everything. No wonder wakefulness was so normal for me.

I began doing neurofeedback in April to retrain my brain. For two one-hour periods each week, I am hooked up to electrodes at various points on my head. I then do exercises on the computer, in which I control the activity on the screen via my brain. Alpha, beta, and theta waves are affected during the treatments. I can’t tell you, practically speaking, how I do it. If that sounds strange, consider this: a few times the therapist has had me look at a number on his screen and “count it down” – in other words, think the number lower. I watched it drop and thought, “Okay, I get it! The number is changing automatically, and I am being led to believe that I am doing it.” So I stopped. And, to my amazement, it stopped too. I was counting in my mind only, so there was no way for the therapist to match the dropping numbers to my pace. I tried the stopping gimmick a few times, and without fail the number on the screen froze at the same time. So it really was my brain controlling the process!

Ever so gradually, I began to sleep. Maybe only forty-five minutes, followed by an hour or two of wakefulness and another half hour of sleep. Since I was all over the place with my dozing, my next step was a consultation with a PhD Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine for some practical management techniques. He has set my bedtime at four in the morning, and the alarm (which I cannot ignore) goes off precisely at eleven. All clocks are covered, as I must be unaware of the time for these seven hours. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which advises insomniacs to get out of bed if twenty minutes pass and they are still up, I am required to stay in bed. I may use a small, clip-onto-the-book light to read a fluff magazine or some other dull material; I am also allowed to watch TV – but only shows I have seen before, so I know the outcome in advance and my brain has minimal stimulation. (If all else fails, and I absolutely, positively will not nod off, I can get out of bed and do something else until I feel tired again.)  I keep a sleep log faithfully. How, you’re wondering, if I can’t know what time it is? I estimate the times. Over the last several weeks, my sleep periods have lengthened and my time awake has lessened. I am now getting between five and eight hours of shuteye most nights, with only a few brief periods of consciousness during the intervals.

But none of this explains where I’ve been. Beta activity in the brain signifies a “wide awake” state. The normal range is 12-38 hertz. Needless to say, I was higher. (I have no history of anxiety, which is commonly associated with high beta.) When training at 11-13 hertz wasn’t producing the desired effect, we began to drop into the lower numbers. I was warned that I might become incoherent, confused, or weepy. During sessions, I was asked if I felt irritable. As it turns out, I was quite comfortable at 4-7 hertz, which is where I am working at present. The only downside is that, during this course, I have lacked the higher cerebral functioning necessary to be productive as a writer. And this is why I have been among the missing here.

Currently I am learning how to change the state of my brain to a more – or less — restful state, and with this technique the words will come. This has been an amazing journey, and one that I would highly recommend to anyone for whom traditional sleep inducers have failed.

Now I just need to round up those renegade sheep and return them to the farmer.

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas! No, wait . . . already?

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I walked into a Hallmark store in the early days of September to buy gift wrap and, upon entering, was greeted (or assaulted, depending on your perspective) by a huge wall of Hallmark tree ornaments. The Laborers had barely finished celebrating their Day; the corn stalks were way too green even to consider Halloween decorating, yet there were those Frosty Friends. While they certainly did nothing to put me in the Christmas spirit, they started me wondering what to get my husband for Christmas this year – a question probably fraught more with anxiety for me than for most other wives, because my husband has a unique talent for coming up with creative gifts and equally clever ways of presenting them.

We had been married only a few years, and my parents’ relationship with Richard was still a bit chilly. As I am an only child it was just the four of us, post-Christmas Eve dinner and Mass, sipping wine by the tree in the living room. Things were cordial enough and, thanks to the efforts of the fireplace, warm. Then Richard stood and announced that he’d be back in about forty-five minutes. He declined to reveal where he was going, or why.

Two pairs of parental eyebrows peaked in unison. What was this? “Going out,” sans explanation or invitation, was unheard of among the men in my family. And on Christmas Eve? Richard didn’t go to bars; the stores were closed by now . . . we couldn’t come up with a reasonable scenario for “why?” And yet . . . I got a quick kiss, and then the car was backing out of the driveway.

It was an awkward absence, especially since my parents hadn’t approved of this marriage in the first place. The ice had just started to thaw, and now I could sense a glacier in our midst as they grilled me. “See, we told you he was not for you. Already he has secrets. He can’t even respect the Holiday! Now what are you going to do?”

I squirmed like a microscopic specimen as they probed for what seemed like forever until, once again, we spied headlights along the side of the house. I steeled myself for what was to come.

What came, astonishingly, were assorted banging, thumping, and scraping noises. (Perhaps this was not Richard after all, but someone trying to break in?)  My six foot, two-and-a-half inch father rose to meet whatever it was head on. He never made it out of the living room, stopped in mid-stride by two very long strips of balsa wood covered with a hard white plastic, accompanied by yet more bumps and crashes. My dad backed away as the slats preceded Richard into the room. Behind him was the business end of my Christmas gift – the dogsled I had coveted ever since I first saw a Siberian in harness!

As I screamed for joy, my mother squawked in protest. Hers was a lovely, formal living room, all interior-designer perfect. The entire family would be visiting the next day. She was not amenable to having this enormous structure stuffed as close to under-the-tree as was physically possible. I felt that the simple beauty of the natural wood was a lovely compliment to the rich blue of the carpet. Mom didn’t see it that way. Her exact words were, “Get that damned thing out of here!” (You have to understand that my mother never, ever swore, so this had to be a very serious offense.) But my religious mom was powerless against the “It’s a Christmas present!” argument put forth by me, Richard, and even my dad. Eventually, she acquiesced and let it stay.

Now it was Richard’s turn to redeem himself with the explanation of his surprise getaway. In the basement of our home he had a darkroom.  After some clandestine arrangements to buy me a sled, he picked it up and hid it where he knew I would never go. He certainly couldn’t wrap it and bring it to my parents’ house along with all the other gifts, could he?

Not only was all forgiven, but Richard’s stock actually rose a few points as my parents saw, yet again, what a loving and generous man I had married. By the next afternoon, my mom was greeting holiday revelers at the door with, “Merry Christmas! You’ve got to come in and see what Richard gave Bette!” And the dogsled held pride of place in the middle of the living room floor.

Designer Dog Breeds

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Certain breed crosses, especially between the Labrador Retriever and Poodle, are being touted as valuable, desirable, and expensive. You wouldn’t think that “expensive” should be a feature of any saleable product, but there is an appeal to the ego involved when it comes to the so-called designer breeds. The Labradoodle is generally pictured as an adorable dog with the basic body structure of a Lab and the curly coat of a Poodle. There are many (including one of my Facebook friends) who assume that breeding a Lab to a Poodle will yield the combination of genes responsible for that specific look.

Now: the whole ugly, sordid truth. Breeding “designer dogs” is a business. These crosses have no more intrinsic value as canine specimens than the offspring of your Dalmatian who got caught by the neighbor’s Boxer. A mutt is a mutt; a cross-breed a cross-breed. Why? Because these combinations will not predictably breed true-to-type every time. More simply put: you never really know which characteristics from the Lab are going to come out in any given puppy, and which ones from the Poodle. So “breeders” (who do not deserve to be called such) usually keep for sale or breeding purposes the one or two from the litter that fit the profile, and cull the rest. In other words, destroy them. This leads people to believe that a certain “look” will result every time, since these are the only dogs that ever make it into the public eye.

Regardless of the fact that both parents are AKC registered, a mixed-breed dog is not eligible for AKC registration, nor is it considered purebred. This holds true for the Cockapoo, Peekapoo, and all the other combo-named dogs.

Another important factor when considering one of these novelties is that, is order to get the look, the gene pool has been opened wide. An undesirable trait from one breed can combine with the same trait from the other, potentially doubling the chances of offspring getting such genetic diseases as hip dysplasia, subaortic stenosis, corneal dystrophy, or a myriad of other problems that translate to even more money spent, as well as an unhealthy pet.

A coworker once bragged to me that her friend had just paid four thousand dollars for a rare, parti-colored Poodle. Her plan was to breed this dog and make a lot of money. Imagine her surprise when I told her that parti-colored Poodles are disquaified from AKC competition, and have no value whatsoever beyond those abundant gifts that any shelter mutt can bring to its owner.

Before you throw away good money for one of these fancy fidos, know that you are buying image only. You are much better off going to a reputable breeder (and I do not mean someone advertising in the newspaper). You can find one for whatever breed you have in mind through The American Kennel Club’s website, www.akc.org. Or, of course, you might look into giving a shelter or rescue dog a second chance. Either way, you come out a winner.