Monday, August 31, 2009

They tell me there will be unicorns.

I'm being productive! Like, I can actually produce valuable work on a time scale shorter than your typical ice age! Incredible!

This is especially astounding, considering the crazy day I've had. I had expected to lose my morning to a training session, and was surprised by an additional 4 hour afternoon session. For those who are counting, that's 3 + 4 = no nap for Kate.

Not the best setup for a narco pregnant lady.

Did you know that narcolepsy is categorized as a disability under the ADA? Neither did I, until recently. And let me tell ya, I understand why.

Narcolepsy is nothing like normal fatigue (and I've had plenty of that, believe me...both as a pregnant lady, and as a first year graduate student). No, narcolepsy is in a category of it's own. When I'm narco-ed out, the tiredness is unbearable. I cannot function, because I'm stuck in that never-never-land of waking REM sleep. It is almost painful, and if it were possible, I feel sure that I would DIE OF TIRED.

The only thing that relieves that feeling is a nap, which was not seeming likely when I crashed around 1 pm this afternoon. Out of desperation (in all seriousness, I was going to DIE) I took a nap in the auditorium, during the afternoon's introductory speeches, and woke up to find one of the panelists staring at me disapprovingly. Sorry lady, but otherwise, you'd have a corpse on your hands.

Anyway, I'm getting work done! At 10:30 at night! After a full day of back-to-back shenanigans!

Granted, I had a good nap on Ross's office couch after sneaking out of the training early (ironically, the session I had to skip was on accommodating student disabilities).

But still! Dare I hope? Is this the turning point on the road towards the gilded-promised-land of (gasp) The Second Trimester?

God, I hope so.

2 comments:

Morgan Page said...

Don't wear yourself out, Kate! Sleep lots & lots. Hey, since narcolepsy is covered under ADA, isn't your workplace required to make reasonable accommodations? Perhaps they could set up a nice little nap room somewhere for you!

Poofsizzle said...

We should get you a baseball hat thats says something like "Recovering Narcolept: deal with it." Then you can just pull it on and catch your nap. :)