Sleep Deprivation, Symptoms, Stuttering- February 2009

I start this month and again I feel good.  I travel home to Philadelphia for a week.  I feel great at home and think that my episode in January really must have been the flu.  Then I am back in LA and it is Day 3 of my period again.  It starts with a familiar headache and then it evolves again into vomiting for hours, I am barely able to walk, I have night sweats, chills, fever, shaking, and my muscles are excruciatingly swollen.  I think that I must have caught something on the airplane.  I am also being tortured by sleep deprivation. Every night I can’t fall asleep and then when I do, I wake up around 4 or 5 AM and lie there until it is time to get up and go to work.   I am working part time at this point and every day I get home from work around 1 pm and promptly fall sound asleep in front of the television, the only time my body allows me to rest for some reason.  I discuss the hormone situation with my doctor and after saliva tests (that I do myself and send to a lab) I am found to be slightly progesterone deficient, and I think that I have finally figured out what is making me feel so toxic during menstruation.  I am put on 1 course of progesterone and after about 5 days I become psychotic and almost unable to mentally function, so I stop.  

These are the symptoms I am experiencing:  debilitating fatigue, muscle fatigue and inflammation, intolerance to exercise, intolerance to alcohol and sugar,  fever,  vomiting, lockjaw, hands/feet/calves/knees tingling, chills, night sweats, lips/nose swollen, feeling of being disconnected, cognitive difficulty (switching words and stuttering), headache (feels like there is a band around my head), irrational anger, all symptoms extremely worse during period, irritable - sensitive to light, sound, smell, easiest activity exhausts me, Reynaud's syndrome, anxiety, toxic feeling during menstruation.  

I notice at work that I am having a hard time keeping details in my head.   I find that when my boss asks me to do something and I don’t write it down, an hour later I forget that she has asked.  I also stutter sometimes when I start a sentence and I can’t recall words when I try to make a point.  I also find that I reverse words without realizing it when I speak.  I am rehearsing a play and forget lines that I know and truly can’t remember them at all.  My cast mate has to prompt me.  I am terrified my mind is betraying me.