I’m scheduled to go back to my family doctor for a follow-up with my sleeping problems on September 11th, but I ended up back in her office today. I fell down my basement steps back in the beginning of June and since that time, I have been having a lot of problems with my back. I’ve had back problems for years but it has been different and more frequent since the fall. She was a little upset with me that I didn’t tell her about my fall when I was at my last visit, but I honestly didn’t think about it and I didn’t put 2 and 2 together.
While I was there she wanted to know if my sleep issues had improved and I said that they had some but I am still awake a lot. Now I sleep one night and will be up all night the next night. Every other night I get a good night’s sleep. But I have also been sleepwalking, which is something that I have never done. She said she wanted to give the meds another week or two and then she will probably set me up to see a sleep specialist.
While I am happy to be sleeping better than what I was, I sometimes think that the side effects of the sleep medications are worse than not getting any sleep at all. I wake up feeling drugged and unable to do anything for a long time. I feel as though what is going on around me isn’t real, it’s like I’m watching my life from the view of someone else. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but that’s the best way I know how to explain it. I will also have to continue to sleep a few hours after I have already slept 8 or 9 hours before I can get going.
I really hope I get to see a sleep specialist. Maybe I can finally get somewhere with my sleeping issues. I will update again once I know what’s going on.
I just completed a sleep study. I was in so much pain and kept getting tangled up in all the wires; I had an allergy reaction to the hypoallergenic goop they use to put on the electrodes and had to take something for that before I went mad with the itching (I felt like I needed to claw my head and neck off and the feeling was spreading to the rest of my body). My irritable bladder syndrome was in full fling despite the medication I took for it, so I was up using the restroom evey 1 – 2 hours. My legs kept cramping despite taking something for that. One of the problems I have is that if I keep my legs straight, the arthritis locks both knees and it seems to trigger the leg cramps. I don’t sleep in the bed anymore due to the pressure points causing muscled cramps; I sleep on the sofa where I can position myself so I don’t roll onto any sore spots; I have a massaging cushion for when my back spazzes out, but there’s no way to take that along because it would interfere with the electrical readings. So I spent the entire, misery filled time there tossing, turning, trying to uncramp something, going to the bathroom, scratching, repositioning, and snatching a few zz’s in between those maneuvers. I called it a “sleepless study” after my time there. I don’t think they’ll learn much.
The problem is, they don’t understand that people can’t always sleep in a flat bed with a bunch of electrodes on and little freedom to move. I was so exhausted after that study I’m not sure when I’ll be recovered.
On top of that, over the weekend I had a lot of things I had to do that added to the fatigue; if I hadn’t had help from my son & husband, I could never have met those obligations.
I don’t want to discourage you, it might help you even though I’m not sure it will do much for me. But I will say this: give yourself 11 days: 5 to prepare, one for the study, 5 to recover. That’s probably what you’ll need. Take as many comfort items as they’ll allow, and follow their directions. If you tend to have a lot of allergy reactions, take an antihistamine before you go. If you take some medications, as I do, for different conditions, build up a blood level by taking them as if they were scheduled for 24 hr before- I believe if I’d taken the medications for bladder spasms and voluntary muscle cramps for 24 hr before, not just once I got there, I’d have gotten more rest, as an example.
Good luck to you; hope it works and hope what I shared gives you some insight on how to maximize your sleep study if they have one. As a PS, if you’re like me and tend to be up all night and sleep all day, make sure you go to a place where they will do a sleep study during the day.