I wish there was more to tell. We continue to struggle with needing much more sleep than is “normal” by any stretch of the word. Some days every week are spent sleeping huge amounts interspersed with meals and meds. Most days include at least one stretch of alert time lasting 4-6 hours, but that doesn’t seem like much to me. A typical day goes like this: early morning get up and take meds :& eat something followed by 2-3 hours of sleep. On some days I get SAD lights in and take more meds before going back to sleep. Then eat something for lunch, take more meds, and then back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. Some days I am able to get up for 1-2 hours after that nap, but many days I am right back to bed and sleep again. 2-3 more hours of sleep until Beloved gets home from work, and then we eat supper and take supper meds. Some days I stay up to watch some TV or maybe spend some time on the computer or knit. That’s my longest period of time to be awake, lasting until any where from 2-6 hours. Then it’s time for night time meds and more sleep. Usually I’m up a few times during the late night hours but go right back to sleep if I get up during the night. If I have an appointment on a particular day I usually have to sleep the whole day before and set an alarm to make sure I don’t miss my appointment. I only make appointments in the mid to late afternoon so that I have a chance of keeping them; and when something like church comes into play where I have to be functional in the morning, I try to prioritize sleeping the day before and still might have to give up and miss church.

Much of my therapy time is focused on why there seems to be such a high need for sleep. So far we don’t have many answers. We (the many of me) and therapists are very unsure about whether we need to force getting up and being more active or if we need to accept things the way they are and trust that the system knows what it is doing.