Shortly before I was prescribed weed it was time for me to work on improving my sleep through what is called sleep restriction therapy. The doctor said to imagine that you're putting peanut butter on bread. The longer you do it for the more it spreads out and weakens. To counter this I would have to set my alarm at 8 am every day and was not allowed to go to sleep regardless of how tired I was until late at night. Yes, this strategy made my sleep cycle more efficient, but it was not able to make up for the lost total hours of sleep. This dragged on for months and was truly one of the most torturous segments of my life. I didn't feel even anywhere close to well enough to hang out with friends. I was constantly missing family dinners. Even video games were denied to me again because I was simply too tired to play. For the most part I watched TV which of course I felt too crappy to enjoy. The doctor also dictated that I should partake in light therapy. This sounds nice but in reality I had to buy a fucking giant, expensive lamp and shine it full in my face for an hour every morning. The idea of this was to force my body to quit using Melatonin (the horomone that makes you sleepy) in the morning and to encourage it to release it in the evening when I'm going to bed. This helped move my sleep schedule to more normalcy, but the continuing poor quality of sleep left me unable to function. Then came the marijuana. It helped me fall asleep so we could orient the other medications to focus on staying asleep. I was finally well enough to go back to school!
I was back at the new small private school (classes starting at 11:30 am instead of 2 pm) which felt great but that is not to say it was all smooth sailing from there. You see, while I'd been dealing with my renegade body parts I was neglecting attention to my nose. Yes, my nose and I have been through a lot together. About six years ago I was at summer camp and was playing a game called "Mosh Ball." To give you an idea of what we're talking about here, this game is a combination of football, kickball, and maybe basketball; I forget the rules. Anyway, I was chasing after the ball and someone on the opposing team was doing the same. The problem? The problem was that he was a councilor twice my height and weight. We both dived for the ball at the same time and my face collided with his shoulder, breaking my nose for the first time. Later that summer someone accidentally jabbed their soldier into my nose accidentally while dancing. It didn't end there either, at winter camp someone running through the hallways accidentally smashed a door into my face, breaking my nose again. That third time I simply reset the nose myself. So you see, my nose is a trooper. He was a little crooked, sure, but that just added character. Unfortunately I eventually realized my breathing at night was problematic due to the way the nose broke. Why is being able to breath through my nose so important? Well, at night I have to take a lot of sleeping medications which all have the side effects of drying me up. Opening my mouth to breath makes this worse and I would wake up at night with my tongue feeling like sandpaper. I was sent off to a nose doctor who then preformed septoplasty surgery to fix my deviated septum. Recovering from that surgery was another extremely uncomfortable period of my life, because my nose was constantly bleeding and stuffed with gauze. This meant my nose was now completely blocked which of course made the dryness issue fifty times worse. On the bright side my breathing slightly improved and my nose looks much better now.
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