It's Definitely Gabapentin Season

It's damn sian to be woken up when I'm fast asleep because of a thunderstorm. Well, it isn't the crackle of the thunder or the rain pelting against the windows per se. I can easily sleep through those. But Choya can't and she's frightened to death of thunderstorms. So I have to be awake to sit with her. 

It's even more deplorable in this scenario — if I'm not asleep by 10.45pm and am awake to do chores and such, and when I'm ready for bed at midnight, the thunderstorm booms at 1am. WTF. It has been doing that for a few nights now. At least these 1am storms do mean that I can sleep by 2.45am or so. Not too bad.

I can't even like sleep in the living room when the thunderstorms roar. She needs me awake and moving. Music doesn't calm her down. Only Gabapentin does. But it doesn't work instantaneously. Sumatra squalls simply decide to form, rather unpredictably. I'm not awake to catch it. My voice seems to calm her down.

She vacillates between wanting to be carried, then put down, then be carried. It's rather exhausting. Reading a random essay seems to calm her down. She doesn't want me to talk to her; she wants to hear my reading voice. The academic tone. Okay. Can. That's my work voice.  

The Sumatra squalls are really annoying. They bring thunder that rumbles every 15 minutes or so as they pass. It takes about 1.5 hours for each squall to fully clear. We're still in inter-monsoon. Good lawwd. I can deal with the 1am storms. I might lack sleep but I'm not incapacitated the next day. These Sumatra squalls that come at 3am and 4am are the worst. Those are debilitating. Or when it stops raining, and I think the thunder has stopped, it happily rumbles again an hour later. wtf, truly.

I've eased off on Gabapentin for a few months, but now it's the season to dose Choya again. I do need to keep her cortisol levels constant, and her body's immune system calm and not thinking that it has to fight inflammation (and anxiety) all the time.

It's not as if the thunderstorms will ease up when the Northeast Monsoon finally arrives end in like 10 days. We're just going to get dunked with rain and thunder crackling again daily. Bringing out rain-gear and dealing with the wet ain't difficult. Dealing with a dog with true astraphobia in a full-blown anxiety attack is quite another.