Restless Legs Syndrome can really throw a wrench in an entertainment reporter’s fabulous lifestyle. When I came down with the dreaded condition in April, my only consolation was that it had been getting major press; it’s rare that my ailments, from hay fever to epilepsy, have had such an air of topicality or trendiness. But that was the end of the joy. As my leg constantly moved, I found myself unable to sit still at events I was covering — not in the usual restless way, but in an extreme fashion that filled me with anxiety and panic. I found that when I sat, I was desperate to stand, and when I stood, I was anxious to walk, but the second I started doing that, I was suddenly overcome with a need to sit down again. Whatever I was doing, I wanted to do the opposite.
This proved disastrous at meals, where I kept bobbing my leg and bolting out of my seat, and at Broadway shows, where I catapulted between my coveted aisle seat and the back of the theater while watching “Mean Girls.” What’s more, the fact that this was the same (left) leg that got broken in a bike accident last June complicated things, seeing as I’d had major surgery on my calf and ankle. So now, I was basically experiencing not only restless leg, but restless rods.
Restless Legs Syndrome reportedly erupts from mental or physical challenges or the side effects of certain medications, though what exactly triggers it remains murky. In my case, a doctor said it had to be the result of my just having been prescribed a pill called Abilify for anxiety. But shockingly, she wanted me to keep taking the Abilify rather than upset the cart, which I thought was like continuing to hit your bloodied head with a mallet because it takes your mind off the swollen knee the mallet was prescribed to distract from. I stopped taking the pill.
To treat the RLS, a nurse friend told me to take magnesium, calcium (to make the magnesium stick), Vitamin B complex and Arsenicum album, a homeopathic remedy, so I did. Meanwhile, other people suggested leg exercises, but I suspected this problem wasn’t really about the leg, it was psychological. Still, I did some physical therapy stunts left over from last year’s post-surgery rehabilitation: stretching my leg and writing the alphabet in the air with my toes. They didn’t help. But more felicitously, I learned that the anti-seizure drug Gabapentin is a popular remedy for RLS. That was amazing news because I happened to be put on that at the same time as the Abilify!
As I popped pills and prayed, I left a screening of “A Quiet Place” because I felt squirmy (not because of the film, but because of the RLS). I split a Tribeca Film Festival luncheon featuring festival co-founder Robert De Niro, though I valiantly managed to stay put while De Niro spoke at the podium. (He talks quickly.) At a Delmonico’s meet and greet with Denzel Washington, though, I was busting a gut and had to run before gracing Denzel with my incredible presence; he must be devastated. When at home, I’d either pace around the apartment, compulsively organizing shelves and re-washing dishes, or I’d find myself marching out the door to buy milk at Duane Reade at 3 a.m. (Oh, my RLS also made me sleepless, which adds more hours that you need to aimlessly fill with minutiae in order to get through them.)
I managed to almost stay still for two documentary interviews — I’m a press whore — but generally, I still felt hopelessly nomadic. At an event, I ran into another doctor friend, who seriously recommended I put a bar of Dial soap under my mattress; it’s an old wives remedy that supposedly sometimes helps, maybe because it gives you blind, placebo-like hope for a second. I desperately followed his advice, but I’m quite sure it was actually my friend’s recommendation plus the Gabapentin that helped me round the corner. (For safety’s sake, I’m still taking them.) That weekend, I paid to see “I Feel Pretty” and I felt homely, but relaxed. My leg was finally starting to respect gravity again. I’m ready to sit through two nights of “Harry Potter” now. I think.
Michael Musto is an entertainment writer whose weekly column, “Musto Unfiltered,” appears on NewNowNext.com.