welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

didnt make it, help us

DIDNT MAKE IT
yesterday i was looking forward to going to ut southwestern to
the alzheimers disease research center to do my annual
followup visit for the adni or alzheimers disease neuroimaging
initiative
but
i didnt make it
because
the night before i could not go to sleep
1000pm then 1100pm  then midnight then 100am then 200am
i mean 2 eyelid open not being able to go to sleep
then
i dozed off awakening
i mean wide awake at 400am
knowing we needed to leave in a hour at 500am to make
the long drive to dallas for the appointment

no way i thought as i got up
there is no way i can make that drive and stay awake
and
there is no way i will be able to do my 2 hr neuropsych test at
1100am and be at my best
my most alert self
heck im already working at a deficit there 2 standard deviations below
what is normal for my age and degree of education

so to be accurate and to be fair to the study and to make sure
i didnt fall asleep driving
i canceled my appointment that morning
with the plans to return again in the next few weeks

why couldnt i go to sleep
wasnt nervous at all about going
didnt nap too much the day before in fact i cut back some on that
didnt drink a lot of coffee late or eat a lot of chocolate candy late
which would let the caffeine in all that do its thing

i take aricept (donepezil) each morning and i sometimes will
have the problem of insomnia but not this bad
it seems as if there is too much aricept in that pill that day
maybe the quality control sucked that day it was made
thats what it feels like
when i first started taking aricept (donepezil) this is the way it
made be feel only this was the worse

one thing is of course when you are in my shoes
is that one of the things that happens with alzheimers disease as
it progresses is that it begins to alter sleep patterns such that
sometimes a person with the disease cant sleep at all at night
that
i am afraid was what i was and am worrying about

i dont want to be one of those nighttime wondering folks you
read and hear about

this morning i read this article that said that 7 hrs is the sweet spot
on the amount of sleep you need to get each night
a recent memory test study showed that those who got 7 hrs
did better than those who got less than that and
those who got 8 hrs of sleep

for me 2 hours just didnt cut it last night

HELP US
many of you know that i do volunteer work for the
williamson county habitat for humanity
i do the landscaping for the houses trying to do the best we can
with limited funds
we get some money left over at the end for landscaping but
sometimes that money gets siphoned off since the landscaping is
done last

so i have set up a crowd funding site just for the landscaping for the
next habitat build in jarrell texas
any money raised will be used only for this houses landscaping
our goal  is to  make the yard as xeric as possible but to make it
attractive to the eye and have it as the best yard in the neighborhood

so please go to my site at gofundme to read about it
and to make a donation if you are able to
so far we have raised $200 in rock donations and $100 in donations

click here to donate
landscape for habitat for humanity

the organicgreen doctor

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