Cautious Hope

Wow, am I excited. It’s here! See?

And what, you ask, is that? And are you excited or cautiously hopeful? Make up your mind.

You sound a bit put out. Hush now, I’ll explain.

This… thing… is a Relaxis Pad. FedEx delivered it today, after a day or two of delivery snafus or delays. I was beside myself wondering when it would get here.

Hold on, I’m telling you.

Relaxis is supposed to alleviate restless legs. Now, I absolutely know that there are no guarantees. It might not do a thing for me. But we had a trial run and I’m… cautiously hopeful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please work. Please, please, please, please….

 

 

Here’s the long story: I’ve had RL for twenty years. The lost sleep cannot even be calculated. The agony, as it has worsened over the last few years, has driven me nearly insane. I hate taking medication, but  I’m never without my Sinemet, no matter where I go. I take that stuff like it’s my True Promise of Everlasting Life.

So recently I was taking a Sleep Improvement Class. I have other sleep issues besides RL, but the RL dictates everything about my behavior and success, or lack of it. And last week, at the last class, the instructor mentioned she’d found out about this thing that might help.

It’s the only non-drug treatment for RL that’s approved by the FDA. It’s only available by prescription. And it costs a fortune, but there’s a 30-day return guarantee if it doesn’t work for you.

Call me skeptical, yes. But I’m not going to pass up a chance. So I asked my doctor about it and she asked the neurologist, who said he’d heard of it but didn’t have much knowledge, but he didn’t think it would hurt to try. So I picked up a paper prescription, took a picture of it, and emailed it, along with an order form, to the company making the things.

http://myrelaxis.com/

Then waited at the extreme edge of impatience for the thing to get here.

Which it DID, today.

The deal is, once it arrives, the patient unpacks it and gets on the phone with a company representative. “Carl” was professional and helpful. He had me sit on the pad and turn it on, then talked me through the controls. It’s not difficult or confusing, but he had some tips, then had me increase the vibrations until it was pretty high. While I sat with the thing grandly shaking, he talked about hard-of-hearing patients liking the high setting because then they could hear it. Then he had me turn it down.

This was a test.

He explained that some people can’t handle vibrations and this time at the high speed nearly always brings that into the open. These people almost never succeed with the Relaxis and they have to return it.

But I passed.

Which means I get to try it out for the next few weeks, experimenting with settings and circumstances to see if will stop the symptoms. I’m not sure what it’s actually doing that a normal vibrating pad doesn’t do – I’ll ask that on Friday when I talk to Carl again. But the idea (I think) is that the frequencies used actually trick the brain into thinking the legs are moving. It therefore stops sending insane signals to the nerves.

The best, best, best part? We got the portable version with a battery. It travels. I was seriously this close to never going to visit my kids again because car rides and plane trips have become pure torture. There is only so much Sinemet one person can take, after all. So my cautious hope is underlain with a solid thread of please work excitement. Please, let me have my life back.

I will report, probably more than you want to hear. Tonight is the First Night.

Let’s do it!