u/kiripon

my first language is Polish but as immigrants to the US, my father spoke with us kids in English so he could practice more I guess and we couldn't go to Polish school as my father worked weekends and my mom didn't drive. So I'm just brought up hearing what I heard, picking up on stuff, and making sense of the language myself. Then the past 5 years since moving out I have really struggled keeping my Polish up as the only one I speak it to is my dog lmao. I'm learning more now as I want to visit my extended family for the first time in decades and while I await textbooks and am using apps, I appear to be a mess!!!! Are my sentences in the wrong order since the apps responses differ? My sentence order is closer to the English structure, I think. My mom says "either way is fine" and "they'll understand you either way" so I assume the way I'm saying these isn't the correct way? I'd love to speak properly and not clearly sound like a foreigner.... let me know please! (sorry for format, on mobile)

correct response: Czy możemy zjeść razem obiad?

my response: Możemy zjeść obiad razem?

correct response: Jesteśmy tutaj już kilka tygodni.

my response: Jesteśmy już tutaj kilka tygodni.

correct response: lle to jest tygodni?

my response: Ile tygodni to jest?

correct response: Ale jeszcze nic nie kupiłem.

my response: Nic nie kupiłem jeszcze.

ETA: yes i forgot the "but" in the last one as i typed it out here 😅

i don't regularly need naps, but when i do, its because a sleep attack is coming on: yawning, eyes watering, even salivating more which all happened when id push myself to stay up late and my body was trying to tell me to sleep. so these are easy to tell when i need to nap.

titrating xyrem has been rough and tiring for me, and this morning i feel as I'm just so tired and getting more tired. my chest feels heavy, my eyes do too. is this the time to take a nap? when do you all nap?

JayJay has separation anxiety which I started desensitization for after 2 years of just sedating or bringing him along with me everywhere...so whatever walks I want to take, are always with him, and every single walk with him is a training session. I always have my little doggie gear bag packed with various value treats depending on which triggers we're going to come across, as well as a clicker. He was able to sit 10 feet from a dog, even multiple dogs, and calmly watch them pass by.

about a month ago we were walking him with my mom and her dog. a little on jay: he gets what appears to be jealousy. if my fiance (who he adores to high heavens while i am his main caretaker who does everything with him lmao) hugs me, jay starts bark howling his husky way for attention. if we show my mom's dog attention, jay starts it up again. so we were on a walk. i see a dog appearing so i pull jay aside quite a bit. he sees my mom's dog greet the other dog. jay loses it. lunging like his life depended on it, i can hardly hold this 50lb dog back. i started crying i was so disheartened. i assumed he got jealous again that my mom's dog got something he didnt.

Ever since then, training has gone out the door. If he sees a dog at 100 feet or across the park, it's game over and fixated staring and lying down. I already only take him to the woods. I go out my way to drive to the woods early in the morning and late in the evening to avoid dogs (despite now managing prey drive) but when we come across them, we cant separate ourselves that far. There's a local park with a huge grass ring I move him into the center of and continue counter conditioning but with my luck, half the time it fills up with so many dogs that it becomes difficult.

He's on clomicalm which helped training but his personality is subdued and he got jumpy fears. He's on gabapentin 300mg as well. This is just one of many daily problems. Every time I work on one thing and solve it, another one pops up. And now one completely regressed. I have near 0 quality of life because it revolves around him - which I was fine sacrificing with things for him, but after years and years of it, its begun affecting my mood and I feel like I have no use trying for the future I wanted because it wouldn't suit his needs. We cant even rehome him if we thought he stood a chance because he wasn't neutered because all the drugs in the world couldnt calm him at the appt and he began biting. He's my soul dog and I hate that this is happening to us.

title!

this is long. I'm sorry. you can definitely skip around to get the gist, but all of this is relevant. my treatment concerns are in the last few paragraphs.

we have a boy for the past 4 years (estimating he is 4.5) we adopted from a rescue that lied to us about his abilities and his issues: poor dog socialization, resource guarding. and this "low maintenance dog that's good for our fenced apartment house" turns out to be husky with GSD, BC, ACD. that's fine. i adopted him, it's my responsibility. scent training, diy agility course, decompression walks twice a day in the woods. i was always unable to work much in my life but any vet bills were paid for. $5k leg surgery first month? anything for him.

he was a frustrated greeter. not to mention he absolutely must have missed important socialization as a puppy because he does not understand other dogs' body language. but we did loose leash training and can walk him on a 15 foot lead. we go to particular parks or at particular times to places to avoid dogs, do counter conditioning or let him just relax and watch other dogs if we can. although there are times i cannot keep him under threshold if too many dogs appear.

resource guarding issues. I've been bitten twice with a level 3 and we have gotten snapped at other times, as well as some strangers on a walk getting snapped at. it was things that we shouldn't have done like moving him or people putting their hands out. so we have figured out his triggers , taught "excuse me" and I think his clomicalm helped because we have successfully avoided any snapping ourselves in a year or so, and he actually seems to show some kind of warning now. however I truly thought he was going to attack our family dog a couple weeks ago when he was just passing by a treat that my dog left behind. we got a muzzle to train him in, it should come in today.

then he got separation anxiety and i began getting more and more ill. i was home often, so not a problem. we brought him with us everywhere or used trazodone situationally. and he was a panter. as if a constantly anxious pup. we tried prozac but it just killed his appetite and made him lethargic. few months ago tried clomicalm because we finally wanted to actually do separation anxiety training, too. in this time he's gotten new fears.

it's now difficult and frustrating to get him into his harness and also into the car when he used to love those things. he jumps feet in the air like a cat over random things on our walks like sticks. he has been freaking out at the vacuum cleaner. he is fixated on motorized bicycles and similar things. but it's been able to help me get some classical counterconditioning in like when we're in the car trying to get gas so that he doesn't jump and bark at the gas attendant, so that when he sees our neighbor outside or the mailman, that i can do clicker training. but it is so exhausting. I still can't take him to a park and go use the bathroom first even if i need to because he's going to jump at the window and cry unless he gets his energy out first. ever since he killed a rabbit in our yard his prey drive has jumped up 100% and now walks are even greater disasters because this parks that don't have dogs have deer and rabbits and groundhogs. like he can never relax. i just want him to enjoy sniffing the world but he cant and i just feel like I'm failing at helping him get there. I want to try to do another anxiety medication instead but we were supposed to start separation anxiety training so now I'm lost. we have a vet visit tomorrow.

AND. this is all on me. I'm at home not working, but it's because I'm sick. im on disability and low income. i have cognitive issues, I have adverse reactions to my medications, I have had almost no human contact with anyone besides my doctors in 2 years. I'm titrating a medication for narcolepsy that should hopefully lead me to getting restful sleep without any side effects so that I can actually have a clear mind during the day. so I know I can get there one day, I know I can be a more functional person. but it's been 2 months of hell from it already and I have maybe 3 good days a week where I can think clearly enough to even read a book. I also have ketamine therapy for my treatment resistant/suicidal depression. I can only go on Saturdays due to his SA and i dont like sedating him(and we cant once we start training) and if I miss a Saturday due to illness or dr is out, that's been causing relapses for me. maybe thats why ive been falling apart more? or maybe its cumulative stress.

i thought of a sitter but the idea of having him adjust to someone to watch him gives me so much anxiety. I would have to pay multiple times for them to come by for him to get used to them after all the barking (would they even feel safe?) and then still have to make sure that they can handle him, although I'm certain that he would just be hanging out outside or lying down inside. I'm just struggling to take that first step so maybe I don't have an excuse here. although when he's outside he has triggers, so now I have to teach another person everything i taught myself to manage him? oh god. this is so exhausting. i don't have the mental or physical capabilities right now. ive been diagnosed with 2 chronic illnesses in just the past 2 years not to mention the mental issues i have. we can't board him because we didn't neuter him because it was not suggested to because dozens of studies show it would just worsen behavioral issues so we didn't want to do that to him.

ive been on his side this whole time even when my fiance suggested rehoming. i was shocked. then I started thinking about it the past couple weeks. but then how could I possibly rehome him. to who? who would take him who could I trust that can't have children and can't have dogs that's probably a trainer that could handle this and not someone that would take him in and put him back into a shelter or take him in and use aversives? what kind of life is that? I have hung in there for years and now when I'm realizing all the problems he has all the anxiety he has and that it's all on me that I've been actually having mental breakdowns and crying.

i feel like i have caregiver burnout because every single time we step outside even to our yard it is a training session. i have mine!, BAT 2.0, control unleashed i all bought recently. I'm trying to read them and so overwhelmed. I don't even understand how I could reasonably do this when a dog treats are supposed to be 10% of their diet.

what other option is there? BE? thats the love of my life, my soul dog. I'd feel like such a failure, that I should just try to stick it out some more and see where I can get me, just keep pushing myself but at what point do i stop? it's damaging my mental health alone not including the things I'm missing out in life from tending to him at all times. im so afraid and im so sad for this situation.

marking when he looks at a dog, then treating. there are times that I'm doing this over and over again for the entire duration that he's able to see the dog. there are times I don't have to do anything at all he sits there quietly and just watches but that's far and few in between. we train from afar if we can but our regular route is a secluded trail in our local state forest where we might come across a dog on the same trail and we have to pull him to the side. so he's quite close to the dog but he seems fine and just sits. kind of jumps up excitedly when we decided the dog has long passed but was calm throughout it. much more often than not however he keeps returning his gaze to the dog if we are in a more open area like a community park.

so if we continue on our walk after letting a dog pass by or if he notices one behind us from afar, he turns his head back, back to me, and then continues walking. and then he yurns his head back again. and again and again. is this as good as it gets? or do they eventually learn to just keep walking calmly and ignoring the dog?

what can i be potentially screwing up or what else other methods can i apply?

i got switched to xyrem which ended up being generic sodium oxybate on my prescription. i saw i was going to hear from accredo instead of ESSDS and when looking them up, im just seeing posts about people waiting weeks for their meds or onboarding? of course nobody is going to post if things are going well but can i get some insight from those using them on how it's going? ive had a hellish 7 weeks on xywav and i was so eager to get off of it and start a new med.

so i have really mild N. doesnt even put a dent in my life, really. and i never had trouble falling asleep. but now i do.

maybe coincidence but i started xywav 6 weeks ago. i took xywav for one night and the next night i skipped it, as i was anxious. but then i lay there for an hour. i would have had 0 issue falling asleep and would be out in 5-10min, but here i was, my brain in "nap mode" where i "saw" a huge flash of light (hallucination which i hardly ever experience) and became alert and refreshed. i had to take klonopin because i couldnt fall asleep.

the next night i fell asleep okay.

then i restarted xywav again for two nights. then i found out the anesthesiologists wanted me to stop xywav before a procedure. same night: couldnt sleep again. up one hour before succumbing to klonopin because my brain was in nap mode: lying there conscious of my surroundings but having these weird thoughts like im in and out of dreamland in my mind. same kind of naps like during the MSLT. is this what those with N experience when they say they have trouble falling asleep?

now ive been on xywav for 6 horrible weeks and my dr and i decided to stop it while awaiting xyrem. holy crap. i still can't freaking sleep. my brain just lies there in nap mode. i eventually need to take a sleep aid. is my brain scrambled?! i tried lumryz in the past without a problem going to sleep so i doubt its the xywav but ive also NEVER had trouble getting to sleep before i tried xywav. did my N just worsen?

i have failed every daytime med, fwiw. im only on this. i have no crutch. i started standard titration under drs instruction and it took weeks away from me. 2.25g was depriving me off sleep and 3gx2 have me such bad all day brain fog i was a zombie. we tried 3x2.75g and i had brain fog half the day until like 4pm. people said dose is too high if this happens. i looked at the slow titration and restarted it with Dr OK'ing it. i restarted at 2.5gx2 for a week. by the end of it I was waking up feeling relatively good, but the last two nights I had slept under 5 hours. i wanted to stay a little longer on it but l said okay well it's been a week I can move up.

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first two nights on 2.75g i woke up GREAT. this visual and mental brain fog lifted heavily! i could almost see as clearly as i could on vyvanse/modafinil/baclofen. but yesterday something hit me out of nowhere a few hours after waking and i thought maybe i need a nap and i took a nap that was cut short by partner entering the room and had horrific brain fog from waking up from it from 8:30-5:30. i don't know if it was the nap or coincidence but that sucked. i had a day of things planned ahead. i couldn't do anything at all.

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last night went to bed, took first dose under 3 hours in, second dose lasted 2.5h and i woke up so groggy and foggy. i want sure if i should fall back asleep so i didn't. well all morning ive had brain fog since i woke up. can't think or see straight. i took a nap and it didn't help. once again can't drive, cant walk my dog, can't cook, cant read. I am literally sitting wasting most of my days away and waiting for this to help. mostly i have brain fog. and I do not see many people complaining about this brain fog. i would way rather be vomiting and nauseous than this. i've spent quite some time crying since starting. I was doing better when I wasn't even medicated. and I had woken up feeling pretty good the past 5 mornings and especially the past two on this new dose so why did today happen? I hear that brain fog is what happens when you're in too high of a dose but then why with the past two mornings, I felt amazing? I'm no longer looking forward to tomorrow. I don't know what to do or how to feel. I'm just scared.

i started wellbutrin this past november because im always worse and more depressed in the winter. also my environment/life situation has been poor so i needed help. then i started spravato in march and it was AMAZING. i was SO happy, so motivated, started and kept routines, began listening to music for the first time in years. so we stopped wellbutrin end of march bc spravato is clearly the magic maker, and i never noticed wellbutrin "hit" really, no marked energy increase, no change in sleep, etc.

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well i have been doing so poorly since stopping wellbutrin. my energy during the day has been SO poor. ive been uninterested in music, uninterested in hobbies. i asked to restart it again because I guess there was some really positive synergistic effect between those two. well i took it one day in mid-may, 75mg ir (i was on 75mg ir 2x/day) in the morning. and i had such horrible brain fog for 7 hours i was too scared to try it again. couple weeks later thinking it was a coincidence, same thing. what the heck? why? i dont want to take XL/SR, im SO sensitive to meds i am traumatized by past discontinuations even at pediatric doses. IR was what we decided on for this reason, can break and taper off easily.

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anybody experience this side effect? if i actually stuck out the IR, would it go away within a few days? i feel like ive come across that somewhere....?

anyone else experienced this where you wake up from your meds, and have brain fog and are tired and groggy for around 13 hours after your last dose, and then suddenly perk up and youre awake and more clear headed and awake?

i was on baclofen before this for months where when it worked - it worked to keep me awake and clear all day. this only started with xywav and at every dose so far up to 3gx2. even 3/2.75 does this. dr has no clue. like i cant drive or read a book until half the day's gone by.

i have had 100% of my symptoms managed 99% of the time ever since I got put on ivabradine. I've been on xywav for a couple weeks and slowly been having brain fog, turn into palpitations, into shaking, into sweaty hands and feet, into tachycardia. I changed nothing in my diet, and I'm very concerned especially about the sweating that it's doing something that not even the ivabradine can help with - especially as I increased my ivabradine and I'm still sweating through my hands and feet, like I'm having an autonomic dysfunction flare.

I have seen things here and there about sodium oxybates and how they are CNS depressants but shoot up in the morning causing autonomic issues for some such as palpitations, shaking, anxiety. Could this be worse for someone with pre-existing dysautonomia?

i started xywav less than 2 weeks ago. a few days into starting it i had diarrhea during the day. i was allowed to adjust my dose again (from 3/3 for 3 days to 3/2.75 because of all day brain fog) and i had diarrhea the first night on 3/2.75.... a lower dose.... while i was asleep/stirring with a vague memory of ALLOWING MYSELF to push, after my second dose. had no clue what i was doing clearly and was hardly awake.

last night, i woke up in the middle of my sleep after my second dose to use the bathroom to have more diarrhea, but it was the most deeply drugged part again i guess because i felt sick with how i felt. had i not awoken, i would have had another accident in bed. one of the nights was 4h apart. last night was 2.5h apart. doesnt seem to care. just happens after my second dose. i looked it up and there have been quite a few cases on reddit of this happening after the second dose!!!

i called ESSDS and the pharmacist hadnt heard of this but they thought its dose dependent and not the sucralose?? because it didnt start from the first days i tried xywav? i have my dr follow up on monday but dear god i am afraid to sleep now.

someone tell me if youve had diarrhea as a side effect did it get better? did a dose adjustment help? do i stick this out if it keeps continuing? xyrem also has a warning for GI issues but is diarrhea one of them? every post ive seen, people were on xywav.....

im on day 10. xywav. 3x2.75g. i lowered the second dose after 3 days of all day cognitive problems.

the first night on this dose i was tossing and turning throughout the second half. last night i woke up and i thought "hey i slept through the second dose!" last night i also took dulcolax because ive been constipated. so while trying to close my eyes for the next hour since I'm still very much feeling the meds, i felt a wetness. i had a vague memory of letting myself do little farts here and there. i thought i should check. i stand up. the room suddenly smells. i go into the bathroom. i have what could only be described as a full diaper. of diarrhea, at that. so xywav has been giving me diarrhea as this is the second time so far, and while i am combatting whatever other issue i am having causing the motility issue, i was too heavily drugged to think about what was going on while i was just letting. myself. repeatedly. evacuate.

i guess ill contact the pharmacy and let them know.

I'm actually asking because my mother loves tea and her birthday is coming up and we have gotten her sampling boxes on and off for years but there's a bunch she simply won't drink in those. So we finally asked for her one favorite.

Her favorite is black tea in general, I've seen her drinking Harney & Sons but she said Tazo's Joy is specifically her favorite now which says its a blend of black tea, green tea, oolong, and peach notes. So I'm wondering what other options there are similar to those that you recommend that she may end up enjoying even more. My own household has heavily fruited or spiced cheap teas so I am no expert on real tea! I'd truly appreciate any suggestions.

i used to say i dreamt maybe once every couple months, if even that. i am recalling such vivid dreams multiple times a night since starting xywav. then i wake up, and feel weird. and that weird feeling isnt going away. its like im dreaming all day, i think derealization/depersonalization is similar? i have really poor time perception, i yawn, i cant keep things in the back of my mind, i keep stuttering trying to recall words, and im also completely unmotivated and apathetic. its tough to use my head and im not feeling great.

im having a hard time discerning if these symptoms are side effects of XYWAV or side effects of POOR SLEEP!!! ugh.

ive been on 3g twice nightly for three nights now. was hoping things would pick up at this dose, but i know its still low. but i also have health anxiety and im scared these are xywav related lol. can i get an outside opinion?

ive seen this mentioned by others yet dont see anyone speculating a solid whyyyy?! it happened my second half of the night on lumryz, and yesterday when i started my 3g x 3g dose of xywav, hoping it would let up at a larger dose, i was in and out of sleep worse than i did the smaller doses before that. first dose is totally fine.