My psychiatrist and I decided to test something this week, since I have been telling him that I’m very impulsive sometimes and I’m sleepy all day, every day. This, added to my concentration and memory problems make me loose my patience, especially when I’m at my tutoring job. While I was telling him about this again he suggested I take more Ritalin, not a higher dose, but take the same dose twice a day, at 8 in the morning and then four hours later at 12.
I wasn’t sure if this would work, if it would help control my impulsivity and I was afraid it wouldn’t work but giving it a shot wouldn’t hurt anyone. We decided that I would try it for five days, if it didn’t work or gave me side effects then I would go back to only taking it in the morning. Then I would have to find some other way to control my impulsivity.
When I got home, after my appointment, it was 12 already so I rushed to take my second Ritalin of the day for the first time, before meeting a friend for lunch. During this lunch, I don’t know what came over me, but I didn’t have a Diet Coke with my lunch, I had water. This is worth noting because I have Diet Coke with lunch every day. I had already had a Diet Coke earlier and I really didn’t feel like I needed the caffeine boost. I don’t want to say the Ritalin did this, but maybe it did.
After lunch, while I was tutoring the kids, I didn’t lose my temper once. I don’t know if I was just forcing myself not to because I had the Ritalin or if it was really controlling my impulses. I thought it was working but I didn’t want to say anything yet, especially since I still wanted to check if it didn’t affect my sleep because for the first time, probably since the accident, I was not yawning all day. That was actually scary because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to sleep. That would mean the experiment was over because no sleep could cause a seizure, which I do not want to have.
I didn’t feel tired when I had dinner, but Jose told me he knew I was because he could see it in my eyes. He was right because I feel asleep an hour before I usually do and slept all night. This morning I woke up feeling very relieved and happy everything had worked out. Today was my second day and everything went well too, let’s see how tonight goes.
Unstoppable María 