Wish and You Shall Receive

Sitting on the couch late one evening whilst reading a newspaper (digitally), I realized I hadn't experienced any creepy crawly leg symptoms! Whilst feeling ecstatic, hoping that it would last until I finally dragged my tired body into bed, I managed to trigger my anxiety.

My lack of symptoms felt too good to be true

"Why are my legs not playing up?" Had I finally come through the entirety of my condition, transitioning out the other side? Could I be suffering from something else that had overridden my RLS? Panic mode set in; I thought that there must be an awful reason my legs didn't feel like they were being scurried over by ants!

Trying to turn your internal monologue off isn't easy. To be honest, I'm not sure you are supposed to. Apparently, it is because of certain brain mechanisms that you can "hear" yourself talk. Mine misfires sometimes, leaving me talking to teddy bears and inanimate objects! As long as I have my earphones in, I look like I'm on my phone, not talking to myself!

I talked myself into a bad case of RLS

Today, my monologue was obsessed with the lack of activity in my legs. So much so that by the time I was tired enough to go to bed it had managed to trigger my RLS into one of the worst cases I had experienced in a long time.

Our brains are so suggestible that we can bring on an attack of a condition that otherwise might have stayed quiet that night. Well done, brain!

The conflict between daytime and nighttime priorities

RLS can be an isolating condition, as it brings your nights to an early close and melds nighttime into daytime, turning all your daytime activities on their heads; sleeping is your main priority during everyone else's waking hours.

If it wasn't because my legs refuse to shut down, all RLS sufferers would be perfect night workers — doubt we would be able to find an employer who would allow us to dance around the factory! Just think of the health and safety restrictions!

The mental and physical impact of multiple conditions

RLS affects people's mental health quite badly due to its association with turning everything on its head, along with the relentlessness of the movement — especially if it is a comorbid condition. Along with RLS, I suffer from fibromyalgia, which causes chronic pain in all my joints. In addition to that, I also have hypermobility syndrome.

String this all together and it means I have loose joints that can cause pain with dislocations, inflammation in all my fibrous tissues between my joints (causing chronic pain), plus a condition that makes me move my legs constantly! A+B+C=Even more enhanced, long-lasting, crippling pain.

Your inner monologue is always listening

In summation: be careful what you wish for, because your inner monologue is always listening. It might just give you more than you can handle, and most definitely more than you banked on.

Remember that you never know what is happening in somebody else's life; RLS might have kept them awake all night, and that is why they pulled out on you or pinched your parking space. Truth is quite often stranger than fiction. My life is a doozy.