My biggest blond moment -ever!

It was strange….these symptoms I was having the entire week of Christmas. I’d go to bed exhausted from working like a ninja-elf during the day and collapsing into bed after taking my nightly vitamins and acid reflux medicine. And then like clock work I’d wake up suddenly and all wide awakey at 1am ready to conquer the world. The first night I figured I’d fall back asleep but it didn’t happen. I tossed and turned until 5am. The next four nights the same thing happened but I could tell I wasn’t going to back to sleep. So I went downstairs and folded laundry, read books, prayed and wrapped presents. I wasn’t the slightest bit tired. It was just an overwhelming wide awake feeling of wanting to accomplish and get things done with a great ability to focus like I’ve never ever in my life experienced in the middle of the night.

This kept happening and I would go back to sleep around 6am and then get up at 8:00am feeling like Santa’s sleigh ran me over head first.

It was rather embarrassing to tell my 7o something (she’d kill me if I said it out loud) year old mother who was up visiting to excuse me while I went to take a nap during the day. The week of Christmas with family visiting is just not the time you want to start insomnia for the first time ever.

Just when I was about to conclude I was going full blown cray-cray it became crystal clear what was going on.

When I went to refill the weekly medicine containers I realized I had been taking our son’s ADD medicine every night before bed instead of my acid reflux medicine that looks almost identical. As soon as I realized it I yelled, “OH MY WORD!!!!” Sophie came running in and my Mom said, “What in the world?”

I explained what I had been doing all week long. After I overcame the sick feeling of needing the reach down my throat to remove all the wrong medicine I’d been taking I was able to laugh hysterically about it.   I can’t even describe the sense of relief I had. Thankfully I had not made the switch on both ends. Our son had not been taking my acid reflux medicine and he had been taking his ADD medicine during the day. Somehow I just put his medicine in both his and my medicine container. I think that’s the biggest blond moment of 2014 – possibly my entire life! I mean that’s just all around bad.

But it It gets worse.

Because I took a week’s worth of our son’s ADD medicine he ran out a week early. And then the pharmacy started asking questions when I asked for it to be refilled early. I was all like, “Uhhh yeah, well, I know it’s a little early but could we just still get it please?” Pharmacy boy is all, “Well, why are you out so early?” And I’m like trying to figure out what to say. Because confusing medicine for one day is understandable. But 5 whole days in a row? Really? Who does that? If I tell him what I did I’m either going to come across as an insane crazy lady or a street dealer. So what did I do? What any normal mature grown up would do. I hung up on the Doctor of Pharmacy pants. I was on hold and I panicked and I hung up. I am an adult and I hung up on another adult. Who does this?

So in my mind I quickly decided plan B would have to involve going the ole natural route for 5 days. My green tea, granola consuming friends would be oh so proud. Nothing red – not even red clothing. No sugar – including candy canes. No gluten, No caffeine, No nothing. Just nothing for 5 days because I was not going to rat myself out. But then I realized we’d never be able to pull that crazy off. We didn’t go natural. We went with left overs of a lower dose I had on hand. That I got off the street. Just Kidding. Another joke that’s not very funny. And it all worked out.

As far as getting back to a normal sleep schedule – 5 days of insomnia took about 10 days to get back into my normal rhythm of sleeping all night long. But I have never been so thankful for my full 8 hours of sleep. Not only that, I have a better understanding and sympathy for people who have insomnia.  I don’t wish it upon my worst enemy.

I gave some serious thought to the power of the medicine that our son is taking. It truly has an impact on the brain and mind – for sure it does! This can be a controversial subject and each parent has to decide what is best for their child who is struggling with the very real diagnosis of ADHD or ADD. We feel the best thing for our son is to medicate right now. It helps him tremendously. For others the natural route works and that’s awesome. Judging each other through the difficult waters of ADD is not what we need. But more like an understanding of each other.

So yeah, if I survived my biggest blond moment of the last 39 years (I like pretending I’m only 39) then I can do anything.