Sensory deprivation -- anybody else?

So, the last couple of months have been super busy: I live in the desert so it's gorgeous here now and I'm outside a lot; we have two pups we're training as service dogs; and all the holidays and a slew of family birthdays have kept us all hopping.

In other words, I've been keeping active, well into the evenings. My bilateral and truncal LE have been doing well with it all. So why am I weepy all the time? Unable to focus on anything? Having trouble finishing sentences? Lethargic, content to sit and think about nothing?

Three days ago it suddenly dawned on me -- AGAIN! Those are all symptoms of sensory deprivation.

Several years ago I was having these same symptoms, and I read an article in the NLN newsletter about kids with LE. It said they have to take their compression garments off for several hours a day because they're just learning about their world and they need the sensory stimulation in order to grow and learn properly.

It struck a chord. I may not be a kid, but I still need that connection to the physical world. So I started removing my sleeves and gloves every evening after dinner. I can't do anything (sewing, housework, crafts) or my hands swell, but I can sit and read (with the book supported on my lap) or watch TV, meanwhile rubbing my arms on the textured chair arms for stimulation. I also started going barefoot as much as possible for more sensory input, tending to my feet with lots of pumice and lotion so they'd be as sensitive as possible. The weeping and lethargy disappeared almost at once. Bingo!

Until a couple of months ago, when I got busy and stopped taking the garments off every evening so I could keep working. The symptoms don't happen all at once, they grow. And over the weeks lately when I've been wearing my garments right up to bedtime and then changing into night garments, I kept telling my DH, "There's something wrong!"

But what? It's so gradual it never dawned on me until a couple of days ago. So now I'm back to removing my garments after dinner, finding textures to rub my hands and arms on, and not doing anything to strain them and make them swell while I'm garmentless. It's changed the whole mood at our house. No more weeping, much quicker recall, and I'm not  blanking out all the time.

Sensory deprivation has historically been used for two purposes: torture to break a prisoner's will, and during the Hippie years as a drug-free way to "check out" of life and experience a detachment from thinking. For either purpose it's a powerful experience, but it's certainly not an effect we should have to be dealing with.

I'm feeling sorta stupid for falling into this again when I did it once already, but it's one of those things that it's so hard to believe that I think it must be all in my mind. Over the years I've asked everyone I could think of about it -- doctors, LE therapists, garment manufacturers, fitters, researchers. Nobody's interested. If you ask any of them what the side effects of 24/7 compression might be they shrug or tell you there aren't any. So I'm sticking my neck out here to bring this subject up because maybe it's just me. But it just happened again, and it's frightening. I sure hope all those people I've asked are right and this kind of thing never happens and I'm making it all up. But just in case there are others of you with bilateral LE and you're experiencing this, I hope my experience helps.

Okay, enough of such dark subjects. I'm really relieved to be back on track -- and now, back to our regular programming!

Whew! Be well,
Binney