Sorry it's been so long since I updated everyone on how Molly is doing. If you don't know about Molly's struggles with Chiari I Malformation, you can catch up here.
Molly's last major remaining issue post-second surgery has been sleep. For several weeks after surgery she barely slept at all. Her neurologist finally found a solution by prescribing a couple of medicines that helped get her sleep patterns in order. It worked wonders. But then several weeks ago Molly became increasingly sluggish during the day, to the point of laying in bed or on the couch for several hours each day, often multiple times a day. One day she got the kids off to school and went back to bed after sleeping for more than 9 hours the night before. Our joy turned to great concern again.
At that point Molly was determined to get off medication. Her neurologist made the statement more than once over the last couple of months that Molly may be on medication the rest of her life. We didn't buy it and became frustrated. At the very least we needed to test to see if she could sleep on her own. Molly needed hope and wasn't hearing it.
I'm pleased to say that a few weeks back, in the midst of her restless days, Molly was able to go completely off her daily medications. Within a day or two of stopping the meds the sluggishness went away. She regained a ton of energy and was still able to sleep at night. It appears that what the meds did to fix her sleep pattern at first began to overcompensate and made her extremely tired. She is now as active and energized as ever.
She still has nights where she just doesn't sleep well and sometimes will take an occasional sleeping pill the following night to recover. But we are very pleased to say that Molly, generally speaking, is sleeping on her own and is off all daily medications.
Let me add that Mol had a recent sleep study, soon after stopping the medications. It revealed two important things. First, Molly never got to the deepest level of sleep. That might be a bigger deal but for the second thing. Molly is at 88% efficiency in sleeping. The neurologist was pretty happy with that. And that's in a hospital room with wires attached to her! So hopefully the deeper, more restful sleep will eventually return. But for now the test seems to reveal that things are pretty darn good, and most mornings she feels pretty good.
Thanks again to all who continue to pray for Molly. I was blown away by the number of people I met for the first time at The Gospel Coalition who asked about Molly and said they were praying for her. My blog readers have all been such good friends to us, and we are grateful for you.
