Day 46 - Insomnia - drugs or stress?

I have been having bouts of insomnia and worry at 5 or 6 am until the time that we wake at 7:50am. I have read that many of the drugs I'm on can cause it, but I'm sorry to report that insomnia is nothing new to me; I have had bouts of insomnia for years, but during the time I was on dialysis, I was also on a drug to control kidney-failure-caused muscle spasms. Clonazepam, this lovely drug, made me sleep like a baby for the first time in years. And though I have two full bottles of this stuff, I've been weaning myself off it for the last 6 weeks. It is advised to go off it really slowly, incrimentally. I am down to an eighth of what I used to take. I had hoped that the transplant would help the insomnia, but I'm quite sure now that it's all down to stress factors.

Stress: the last 3-4 years have been so incredibly stressful. Last year was the ultimate in stress: we bought a very small - 50 square meter (164 foot) house that ultimately needed to be rebuilt while we were living in it. My kidney failed and I underwent dialysis surgery and care and then transplantation. We worried a lot about finances. And that is still the case.

(We need a holiday. Gary hasn't been for 6 years; I've not been since I came here for a week in 2004. Prior to that, my last real holiday was Morocco, 1992).

I have so much concern about the unknown factors which come with transplantation. Why is my abdomen still so swollen that I look pregnant? I am told that it's because I'm thin, but it still bothers me because I like to know all of the information. And why is it so difficult to urinate sometimes? I was finally told that one, and how helpful it would have been had I known in the beginning that transplanted kidneys have no regulation of output volume. So instead of urinating regular amounts at regular intervals, a transplanted kidney produces irregular amounts at irregular and delayed intervals. And, as I had noticed, I was told that patients experience that most of the urinary output is..at night, when I want to be sleeping.

One thing that is really, really difficult is that there was no real communication that post-surgery would be so time consuming and busy. I had envisioned a rest period with reading, yoga and lots of time to myself. Though I have been doing a bit of this, there has been a lot of time filled with travel to and from the hospital, self-monitoring, worrying about finances due to not working much, dealing with administration for reimbursement for donor costs, attempting reimbursement from my insurance company for things they've left unpaid for 6 months, scheduling work, trying to locate an affordable school for Dutch lessons (for my lack of the language has me at such a disadvantage).