Studying was, of course, a special problem. Thanks to the medication I was able to establish a regime in which I would nap for, say twenty minutes, and then put in about an hour of study. I must emphasize that this was only possible because of the Dexedrine I was taking, not necessarily in accordance with the prescribed amounts. Nevertheless no amount of medication could get me to remember the names of cases and I had to depend on my ability to recall and recite the related principle. This is still the case and during my active practice I had it posed a particular problem especially when I appeared before the Court of Appeal. Going to lectures was pretty much a waste of time as I couldn’t keep my eyes open for longer than five or ten minutes during each lecture. In truth the lectures themselves were not very helpful as they were often behind where the student needed to be and before long I abandoned them. Fortunately, I was in a group of Jamaicans most of whom were excellent scholars and who appreciated my difficulties in studying and extended themselves to help me to keep up.
During the exams I managed to keep awake for most of the time by taking additional medication before each paper and to my surprise, obtained five “good third class” passes, two “second class” passes, and two ordinary passes, without any failures, although I thought I was certainly going to fail the last paper, Conveyancing, as I fell asleep for at least 10 minutes and was unable to complete the paper.
I should at this stage say something more about EDS which means “Excessive Daytime Sleepiness”. Without medication EDS can come on at any time without warning, as I have said, during light conversation with friends or serious arguments or debates, when attempting to read, although very noticeably , it is more likely to occur where the subject matter is the object of study as opposed to ‘light reading’ such as exciting fiction or comics. As I have also pointed out it may occur when walking or riding a bicycle but on those occasions one feels the temporary loss of balance immediately with all senses alert so that one is able to take compensating action to maintain one’s balance. Similarly, when one is driving a car. At other times, however, the sleep that occurs seems more like a short circuit in the brain and on getting awake it may take quite a few seconds for one to get one’s bearings.One of the important effects which both Dexedrine and Ritalin had on my EDS is that they both caused me to be warned of an impending attack of EDS so that I could take appropriate counter- action, such as taking a short nap before driving or riding, or letting someone else drive, although such evasive action would not always be available where the proposed action would be attending a class or reading although it did help me to establish a regime of study by knowing when I was prone to falling asleep, as it did later in my legal practice.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
My School Years - College (Part 1)
Having completed high-school in 1954 the question arose – what was going to do with myself? Despite the weakness of the results in the Higher School’s exams I had spent two years in preparing for them (though I suspect it was contrived by my parents to keep me in school as long as possible) and it seemed it would be a shame if I did not use the experience to acquire a profession. But what? Without going into the objective and subjective factors in any detail which were taken into account, I decided to study law, a decision which illustrates that even then I had no real appreciation of the effect of my narcolepsy on my capacity for study. What is certain is that because of my left/liberal views I felt it was necessary to adopt an occupation/profession that would make me independent of the will of established society and it seemed to me that Law would best provide me with that independence.
The first thing it meant is that I would eventually have to go to England to take the Bar finals exam. The first part of the Bar Exams I would be able to take at home once I was accepted by the Inns of Court in London. I sought and obtained a job as an assistant clerk in a Resident Magistrate’s Court and acting upon the advice of more experienced heads in view of my somewhat limited qualifications I proceeded to apply to all the Inns for admission. Upon acceptance at Lincoln’s Inn I jumped at it started taking the subjects in Part 1 one at a time. When I managed to pass each subject with only one hiccup my confidence increased that I could succeed in passing the Bar exams.
To cut a long story short, upon completing all but one of the subjects in Part 1, I quit the civil service when I was not granted leave as many others had been to go abroad to complete the Bar exams and with some assistance from my parents I travelled to England to do so. I remained in England for two years and while there I was able to obtain electroencephalograph (EEC) tests and confirmed not only that I was in fact suffering from Narcolepsy but also that there was nothing else wrong with my brain. Another happy result of studying in England was that I was able to take advantage of their National Health Service and obtain my Narcolepsy medication free of cost. In fact, based on the advice of my doctors in England I continued to take approximately between 30 -40 mgs of Dexedrine daily for the entire time I was abroad and indeed for the next twenty – odd years after my return home, without any noticeably adverse side-effects. In fact it is worth commenting that the entire time I was in the UK no doctor ever warned me that the medication I was taking for Narcolepsy was a dangerous drug and that as an amphetamine ( and ,in the USA, a Schedule II controlled substance) it was extensively abused and was capable of creating “ extreme psychological dependence”. I wish to state categorically that at no time have I ever felt that I had become or was becoming psychologically dependent on Dexedrine. Nor have I ever felt an irresistible need to increase the prescribed medication and, remarkably, I frequently forgot to take the medication despite the fact that it is so important for my well –being. So much so that I have had to take special precautions to ensure that I always had a spare tablet or two on my person in case I forgot to take it. Incidentally, as you can imagine, while I was in England, many were the times that I would pass my ‘Tube’ stop and have to come off at the next or a later stop. I have even on a few occasions when I was particularly tired, travelled to the end of the line.
The first thing it meant is that I would eventually have to go to England to take the Bar finals exam. The first part of the Bar Exams I would be able to take at home once I was accepted by the Inns of Court in London. I sought and obtained a job as an assistant clerk in a Resident Magistrate’s Court and acting upon the advice of more experienced heads in view of my somewhat limited qualifications I proceeded to apply to all the Inns for admission. Upon acceptance at Lincoln’s Inn I jumped at it started taking the subjects in Part 1 one at a time. When I managed to pass each subject with only one hiccup my confidence increased that I could succeed in passing the Bar exams.
To cut a long story short, upon completing all but one of the subjects in Part 1, I quit the civil service when I was not granted leave as many others had been to go abroad to complete the Bar exams and with some assistance from my parents I travelled to England to do so. I remained in England for two years and while there I was able to obtain electroencephalograph (EEC) tests and confirmed not only that I was in fact suffering from Narcolepsy but also that there was nothing else wrong with my brain. Another happy result of studying in England was that I was able to take advantage of their National Health Service and obtain my Narcolepsy medication free of cost. In fact, based on the advice of my doctors in England I continued to take approximately between 30 -40 mgs of Dexedrine daily for the entire time I was abroad and indeed for the next twenty – odd years after my return home, without any noticeably adverse side-effects. In fact it is worth commenting that the entire time I was in the UK no doctor ever warned me that the medication I was taking for Narcolepsy was a dangerous drug and that as an amphetamine ( and ,in the USA, a Schedule II controlled substance) it was extensively abused and was capable of creating “ extreme psychological dependence”. I wish to state categorically that at no time have I ever felt that I had become or was becoming psychologically dependent on Dexedrine. Nor have I ever felt an irresistible need to increase the prescribed medication and, remarkably, I frequently forgot to take the medication despite the fact that it is so important for my well –being. So much so that I have had to take special precautions to ensure that I always had a spare tablet or two on my person in case I forgot to take it. Incidentally, as you can imagine, while I was in England, many were the times that I would pass my ‘Tube’ stop and have to come off at the next or a later stop. I have even on a few occasions when I was particularly tired, travelled to the end of the line.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Onset
My intention in creating this blog was so that persons who have acquired the disease can find some guidance and maybe even some comfort in the knowledge that, as difficult as it may seem, it is possible to have reasonably full life notwithstanding the undoubted handicap that they will suffer. Another primary reason is to provide narcoleptics with facts from which they may arrive at an independent judgment as to whether the drug enforcement agencies, particularly those in the United States are serving them as well as they could.
I am a citizen of and live in Jamaica, a small island in the Caribbean and at the commencement of this intended Blog I was three weeks short of my 74th birthday. I am now 74. Over the last nine years I have been suffering from increasingly severe rheumatoid arthritis and apparently mild prostate cancer, the effect of which has so far only served to deprive me of sexual pleasures. I have been suffering from Narcolepsy from my 15th year, and I mean the Whole Works - EDS, full blown cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations with all the terror that goes with it, and sleep paralysis etc.
I remember the first day Narcolepsy struck. The first symptom I became aware of was the cataplexy. I was at home in my garden with my older brother and some friends and I nearly fell on my face a few times as my knees went limp whenever I was amused. Alarmed, I ran to report my experience to my mother. I was in High School at the time and expected to sit for Senior Cambridge exams in my 16th year as I was considered to be bright. Not after I began to experience EDS in school, however, as I was kept down when I could not keep up with the class anymore due to what was regarded as my indolence. In fact there was an element of indolence in my approach to school, but up till then I had always managed to be in the first 4 or 5 in my class. Still it hurt to be so regarded by teachers whom I respected. All I had to do was to open a book to fall asleep before completing the first paragraph; and, of course I could not keep my eyes open for five minutes during classes.
This was in about 1951 to 1952 and my parents took me to doctor after doctor, most of who suggested that I was just a terribly spoilt child. After about a year we had some luck. The Neurology Department of the University Hospital was being established by an English professor named Cruikshank and my parents succeeded in getting an appointment for him to see me. It took the professor little time in diagnosing my condition as Narcolepsy. (Interestingly, he also told my mother and I that Winston Churchill also suffered from Narcolepsy. I don’t vouch for the truth of this but this is what I was told). Professor Cruikshank also pointed out that I might have to live with Narcolepsy for the rest of my life but that its effect could be modified by drugs and he prescribed 6 - 8 x 5mg tablets of Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) daily. I can’t recall all the specific details of the prescription but I know that I always started out the day with two x 5 mg tablets. The administering of the medication would be done by my family physician, who knew nothing about Narcolepsy and I doubt that I saw Professor Cruikshank more than once or twice after that.
I do not quote the professor in using the word “modified”, but only state the effect of what he said. The reality was in fact a moderation of his instructions. One would have to be very familiar with my condition over the year before I started the medication to appreciate its effect on me. None of the symptoms described earlier were eliminated, though their onset must have been reduced somewhat, for as a result of the faithful intake of the medication I was able, with herculean effort, to obtain Credits and Passes in the Cambridge Overseas Exam, the next year and then two years later, to sit for and “scrape through” the Higher Schools’ Certificate. Every narcoleptic who reads this will understand what I mean when I say “herculean effort” - the effort to focus on a word, a sentence, as you go off for a millisecond and have retrace your reading two, three, four times to make any sense of what you are reading - all this and more continued to be present despite the medication I was taking, but I was somehow able to concentrate for longer periods of time. Almost as important, I suppose, is that I was able to give some legitimacy to the condition I had although I am sure that there remained a great deal of skepticism about its existence among my teachers. Whatever they may have thought, however, there was no longer any indolence in my attitude as it took everything I had just to keep up. One of the immediate effects which the onset of Narcolepsy had on me was in altering my personality. Whereas I had been aggressive, unselfconscious and daring, I became introspective, shy and indecisive thereafter.
The limited effect that Dexedrine had on my EDS did not mean the I no longer fell asleep while walking, or riding my bicycle or while talking, in the middle of a sentence. These remained as commonplace events, and will probably remain a mystery to anyone but a narcoleptic how I could ride a bicycle to school every day and not fall off or run into someone or something. However, it never happened. It seems to me, in recollection, though this is very largely guesswork, that the medication I was taking then, had a greater effect on my EDS than on my cataplexy, or my hypnagogic hallucinations or the other symptoms which I had. Cataplectic attacks in particular have been the bane of my existence and are often combined with the hypnagogic hallucinations. So far as I knew back in the fifties, Dexedrine was the “only game in town”.
I am a citizen of and live in Jamaica, a small island in the Caribbean and at the commencement of this intended Blog I was three weeks short of my 74th birthday. I am now 74. Over the last nine years I have been suffering from increasingly severe rheumatoid arthritis and apparently mild prostate cancer, the effect of which has so far only served to deprive me of sexual pleasures. I have been suffering from Narcolepsy from my 15th year, and I mean the Whole Works - EDS, full blown cataplexy, hypnagogic hallucinations with all the terror that goes with it, and sleep paralysis etc.
I remember the first day Narcolepsy struck. The first symptom I became aware of was the cataplexy. I was at home in my garden with my older brother and some friends and I nearly fell on my face a few times as my knees went limp whenever I was amused. Alarmed, I ran to report my experience to my mother. I was in High School at the time and expected to sit for Senior Cambridge exams in my 16th year as I was considered to be bright. Not after I began to experience EDS in school, however, as I was kept down when I could not keep up with the class anymore due to what was regarded as my indolence. In fact there was an element of indolence in my approach to school, but up till then I had always managed to be in the first 4 or 5 in my class. Still it hurt to be so regarded by teachers whom I respected. All I had to do was to open a book to fall asleep before completing the first paragraph; and, of course I could not keep my eyes open for five minutes during classes.
This was in about 1951 to 1952 and my parents took me to doctor after doctor, most of who suggested that I was just a terribly spoilt child. After about a year we had some luck. The Neurology Department of the University Hospital was being established by an English professor named Cruikshank and my parents succeeded in getting an appointment for him to see me. It took the professor little time in diagnosing my condition as Narcolepsy. (Interestingly, he also told my mother and I that Winston Churchill also suffered from Narcolepsy. I don’t vouch for the truth of this but this is what I was told). Professor Cruikshank also pointed out that I might have to live with Narcolepsy for the rest of my life but that its effect could be modified by drugs and he prescribed 6 - 8 x 5mg tablets of Dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine) daily. I can’t recall all the specific details of the prescription but I know that I always started out the day with two x 5 mg tablets. The administering of the medication would be done by my family physician, who knew nothing about Narcolepsy and I doubt that I saw Professor Cruikshank more than once or twice after that.
I do not quote the professor in using the word “modified”, but only state the effect of what he said. The reality was in fact a moderation of his instructions. One would have to be very familiar with my condition over the year before I started the medication to appreciate its effect on me. None of the symptoms described earlier were eliminated, though their onset must have been reduced somewhat, for as a result of the faithful intake of the medication I was able, with herculean effort, to obtain Credits and Passes in the Cambridge Overseas Exam, the next year and then two years later, to sit for and “scrape through” the Higher Schools’ Certificate. Every narcoleptic who reads this will understand what I mean when I say “herculean effort” - the effort to focus on a word, a sentence, as you go off for a millisecond and have retrace your reading two, three, four times to make any sense of what you are reading - all this and more continued to be present despite the medication I was taking, but I was somehow able to concentrate for longer periods of time. Almost as important, I suppose, is that I was able to give some legitimacy to the condition I had although I am sure that there remained a great deal of skepticism about its existence among my teachers. Whatever they may have thought, however, there was no longer any indolence in my attitude as it took everything I had just to keep up. One of the immediate effects which the onset of Narcolepsy had on me was in altering my personality. Whereas I had been aggressive, unselfconscious and daring, I became introspective, shy and indecisive thereafter.
The limited effect that Dexedrine had on my EDS did not mean the I no longer fell asleep while walking, or riding my bicycle or while talking, in the middle of a sentence. These remained as commonplace events, and will probably remain a mystery to anyone but a narcoleptic how I could ride a bicycle to school every day and not fall off or run into someone or something. However, it never happened. It seems to me, in recollection, though this is very largely guesswork, that the medication I was taking then, had a greater effect on my EDS than on my cataplexy, or my hypnagogic hallucinations or the other symptoms which I had. Cataplectic attacks in particular have been the bane of my existence and are often combined with the hypnagogic hallucinations. So far as I knew back in the fifties, Dexedrine was the “only game in town”.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Starting My Blog
At about 8:30pm 15th of June, my eldest son and I got together on Skype with a view to creating a blog about my life with narcolepsy. In the course of this contact my son to briefly attend to my grandson's to read bedtime stories and put them to bed. However, I was unaware of this as development as I had a cataplectic attack and only learned of this when I reconnected... in fact, I frequently have cataplectic attacks when I talk to him on Skype, escpecially when the grandkids are around.
As narcoleptics would understand, a cataplexy is brought on by emotional response. The stronger the response the stronger the cataplectic attack, and the sight of my granchildren thousands of miles away, viewed over a computer video link, tends to bring this on.
Later we continued to setup my website on which my blog for which my lifetime of narcolepsy would be the main subject. For the next 15 minutes, my son helped me to setup the website narcolepsyandme.blogspot.com. What follows will be the result. It is my hope that other narcoleptics struggling to comprehend their situation will find some degree of understanding and comfort from my blog.
As narcoleptics would understand, a cataplexy is brought on by emotional response. The stronger the response the stronger the cataplectic attack, and the sight of my granchildren thousands of miles away, viewed over a computer video link, tends to bring this on.
Later we continued to setup my website on which my blog for which my lifetime of narcolepsy would be the main subject. For the next 15 minutes, my son helped me to setup the website narcolepsyandme.blogspot.com. What follows will be the result. It is my hope that other narcoleptics struggling to comprehend their situation will find some degree of understanding and comfort from my blog.
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