9 posts tagged “insomnia”

My insomnia is kicking in good and strong. It's been beastly hot and humid and I've had trouble cooling down, even with air conditioners going in multiple rooms. This NEVER happened before menopause. I could turn on a fan and, most of the time, was just fine.

Alright, then, harumph. I'm headed straight back to bed to toss and turn the night away. Bah humbug.

Sigh. Here we go again. It's past midnight and I'm still up. Finally gave up and decided to write some stuff, my usual ramblings.

I have a client and she's wonderful. She's a writer and writing teacher who knows exactly what she wants out of a social media presence. We work together splendidly. She's not afraid to dig in and get working. She knows how difficult it is to write - because she does just that.

I've enjoyed our time together so far and look forward to more sessions. I'll also be putting together a simple blog/website for her and in general showing her around the web 2.0 world!

Got paid for it, too. Good start, there, Margy.

I just could not resist. I was on the couch last night since my husband conked out early and was snoring to beat the band. I picked up my digital recorder and let the words slip out:

Snoring

I'm going to find that Dr. Seuss book again and read it the next time he goes to bed.

To my disbelief. I've been on a rather severe insomniac jag the last three nights. I was so tired yesterday I'm surprised I made it through, period. I conked out last night, then woke up two times. Couldn't get to sleep after the second time. I was very congested and could not breathe.

I had a weird dream and recorded it, at 1:45 am. I put it in my insomnia blog: Midnight Journal. Sorry for the sniffing, but the "breathing disorder" was settling in around that time:

http://midnightjournal.podbean.com/

Gaaaahhhhhh...

I tossed and turned again last night, chronic insomniac that I am. I finally ended up on the couch downstairs at some point around 3:30 am. My mind was racing, even though I was exhausted. This time, though, I brought my digital voice recorder with me and decided to start keeping a record of my thoughts during those so-often sleepless nights. I put the voice recordings into a new podcast, rather than upload it to Vox directly. I'm trying to get the blog onto as many social networks as I can and a separate medium seemed the best way to do that.

Anyway, you're welcome to listen and to comment, at: http://midnightjournal.podbean.com/

Sigh. Don't rain but it pours.

By the way, we need a plumber to fix the washer shut-off valve before the new washer can be installed. And, another repair man was here today to replace the broken hinges on our stove. So, tomorrow we get to pay even more money for a valve replacement. Some time this week I should be able to do laundry, but not today.

I ended up on the couch again last night, although this time it wasn't my husband's fault. I kept tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. I went downstairs again and crawled into the sleeping bag, trying to get settled there. This time, though, I kept a small digital recorder on the coffee table. My brain was exploding again, with ideas for the Maggie and Della novel. Like a good little girl I grabbed the recorder and spoke into it as soon as another idea popped into my head. In the all-in-all, not a bad mental haul as far as the story outline goes.

I wish I could do that during the day, and leave my brain to its needed rest at night. Sometimes, though, my best thoughts will come to me in the shower, or in bed at 1:00 am. I think it's when the rest of the babble is turned off that the deeper creative thoughts come bubbling to the surface.

Better yet, I wish I could "direct" my brainstorms into the direction I want them to go. I'm still puzzling over a progression in the story, one of those knotted threads I have to untangle before getting back to work. No help there. However, I do have some great additional material for a single character that kept my brain going last night.

Sigh. No rest for the weary. At least not this weary one.

Spent a very productive day working on the novel outline yesterday. I was quite tired by the end of the day, as I usually am, and went to bed somewhat on the early side.

Then I woke up at around 3:00 am, went to the bathroom, and then couldn't get the *$#*(@# back to sleep. I tossed and turned. My brain was churning out music and more ideas for the novel. All I wanted to do was get back to sleep before my husband started to snore again. I couldn't shut my brain off, though. Classic pattern of sleep-maintenance insomnia.

No luck. I finally dragged myself out of bed and went downstairs to the couch. I tossed and turned some more, then finally went back to sleep for a little while. I dozed away most of the morning but did not fall asleep after coming awake downstairs.

I went to my outline and added another, substantive, chapter to the novel. I suppose one good thing came out of last night anyway.

But right now my eyes are red and raw and my brain capacity will drain itself within the next few hours.

Damn. I hate this.

I must be tired - so far I've spent most of the weekend in bed, just catching up on sleep. I feel fine, but there are still dark circles under my eyes.

I'm a chronic insomniac, going back to my very early childhood. I've talked to doctors about it and they all says it's genetic. There are certain brain chemicals that become active when the body prepares for sleep. The brain slows down its thinking and body temperature begins to fall.

Unfortunately, neither one of these happens in my case. My brain won't shut off and my internal body temperature remains higher than normal. It normally takes me at least an hour - maybe two - to go to sleep and I'll frequently wake up at least once in the middle of the night. Unless I'm sick, I never sleep during the day. I'll doze, but I won't lose consciousness. It takes time and some pretty serious sleep medication to get me to sleep at night.

It's been a sleep-deprived life, for sure. This weekend, though, I mostly slept. Last night I took a nap at 6:15 pm and got up at 9:30. I'd just had an extremely vivid dream and woke up wondering where I was. Yes, I actually slept and slept deeply! HUH?

I went back to bed, even though my brain was starting to become more mentally active. Eventually it shut off and I went back to sleep. I woke up again and noticed early morning light through the shades. Aram was asleep beside me. I slept again and got out of bed at 9:30 this morning.

Add this to the fact that I also conked out most of July 4th, too. I slept for several hours and only woke up when we had to leave for my sister-in-law's for dinner and fireworks. Now, that was a treat! My brother- and sister-in-law live in Bellingham, Massachusetts and it's a pretty rural suburb. They live off of a dirt road and are a five minute walk from a gorgeous, tree-lined lake. We had a wonderful pot luck meal, then walked off to the lake for fireworks.

Fireworks were spectacular! We had our own bit of lake with only a few other people around. The fireworks were launched from the other side of the lake and were absolutely astounding. They went way over the tree line and filled the sky with light, color and lots of sparkling and booming. There were some "sparkler" type fireworks, that exploded and then just hung in the air like the leaves of weeping willow trees. There were some in the shape of butterflies, too.

But, a really unusual weekend for all the sleeping. I must have needed it! And I'm sure I still do.

O sleep! O gentle sleep!
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hush’d with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfum’d chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lull’d with sound of sweetest melody?
2 Henry IV (3.1.7-16)

I've been following the adventures of my friend, Rosie, on Live Journal as she struggles to sleep through a night. This has, of course, struck a chord in me since I'm a chronic insomniac. She and I talk regularly and I've been following her online sleep log with interest. She has quite the sense of humor:

"so back to the zzzzz pills. finally i got the ROZEREM. you might know it as the commerical with Abe Lincoln and the groundhog. i carefully read (with a magiflier) the directions.

"do NOT use your bed for watching tv or reading. use your bed for sleeping and sex."

i swear that was in the instructions. a bed for sex? who would have thought to try that. i mean back of a car, kitchen table, pool table, sofa, WALMART, but in a BED? oh for pete's sake."

She's up to day three now and still struggling to sleep more than a half hour at a time. There seems to be some progress, but we won't know for sure until she's taken the full course of the medication.

Like Rosie, my brain simply will not shut off at night. My husband is snoring a forest down 10 minutes after he hits the pillow while I toss and turn most of the night away. It's just not fair.

I've had this problem all my life. My dad would rock and rock me to sleep as a baby (yes, he was an incredible caretaker, particularly in those 1950s gender-role days). My eyes would slowly close. Then they'd pop open the minute he stopped rocking. Nap-time was torture in kindergarten. The rest of the kids would be sleeping and I'd be lying there staring at the ceiling feeling bored out of my mind. I never slept through grade school or high school. These days I have permanent dark circles under my eyes. I've tried relaxation exercises, acupuncture, biofeedback, hot baths, long walks, medications up the wazoo and it's still no-go.

A few years ago menopause hit. Hot flash! Okay, I'm up. Shut up, honey, I'm trying to sleep. More tossing and turning, or "pancaking" as Rosie would describe it. I know every feature in my ceiling and can find anything in the dark. Do you ever notice how everything goes completely black when you first turn off the lights, before your eyes have had a chance to adjust? I find it absolutely amazing that I can go from total black, to light-dark, to object identification in less than 10 minutes. First, nothing and then - oh! - there's my dresser. The eyes are amazing things.

I'm using Ambien now, trying to find a dosage that gets me to sleep without inducing a hangover the next morning. I've been moderately successful, but still wake up feeling very tired from the medication. This is a strange sensation: feeling somewhat more rested and, at the same time, tired. I've taken other medications over the years and may switch back to them. Ambien does induce some strange effects before bed, though. Normally I would just get drowsy. This stuff goes beyond drowsy. My head "buzzes." That's the only way I can describe it. I'm not dizzy per se, but I do have balance problems once I take the stuff. I almost fell over once with a higher dosage. I was in the shower when suddenly everything went topsy-turvy. Things "looked" different, they way they might with a bad head cold - but not quite. Again, it's in the eyes and in the way the brain interprets the signals they send. Look at something with a clear head and it appears one way, the "normal" way. Then look at it again when the brain is processing it differently. It's at a distance somehow. It's more difficult to make sense of its actual identity and place in space.

I experience that visual vertigo when I get a migraine, too. Clearly there's an eye-to-brain process that's affected by all this.

I'll give the Ambien a little time. Perhaps I just need to catch up on more sleep and will give it a try this weekend when I don't have to be up for work. It does seem to be helping to shut off my brain, so maybe I'll stick with it and see what happens over the next few months. I don't see Abe Lincoln playing chess with a gopher in my attic, but I am remembering some pretty wild dreams. What's Eric Clapton doing here? Uh oh!