Ahh... bedtime. It seems to come around oh so often. I think I would enjoy longer days and less sleeping... But we all know that we have to sleep. Well sleep is something that has been consistently hard since I began having endometriosis symptoms.
At the beginning, I don't know if I would have been sleeping or not, but the pain was so bad, I basically didn't sleep normally for months. The thing with sleep is that we try to relax and turn off our brains and let the sheep counting take us away... Well when you have acute pain, chronic pain, post surgery pain... it is not easy to relax. I could make it throughout the day simply by keeping myself distracted by doing about 3 mindless things at once. But if I stopped doing those things, it didn't matter how tired I was, all I could think about was the pain. I was uncomfortable every second before I found a doctor who could manage pain while also dealing with the endometriosis. I have never slept with the tv on, radio on, or even been able to fall asleep to music, but I started leaving Netflix playing on my computer while I was in bed trying to sleep and I am only now getting myself able to sleep without the computer playing some television show.
When the pain was at its most severe point, and I hadn't found anyone to really teach me how to manage or get me some medications, I routinely would fall asleep around 9 or 10 AM simply because I couldn't stay awake any longer. I couldn't ignore the pain or get comfortable at all so I would be up all night. I would see the clock hit 7 am and I would pretty much give up on trying to sleep but I am not someone who can go 24 hours without sleeping. Never have been (which does make sense if endometriosis is an auto-immune disorder, but the big auto-immune disorder we all know is AIDS/HIV, so I think auto-immune still carries a scary connotation with it).
When I was first put on some of my meds, particularly neurontin, I feel like all I could do was sleep. When I was awake, I still felt sleepy. I would fall asleep in the middle of the day, which didn't help me when it came to night for some reason. That one was made me the most drowsy and I had to deal with that when coming off of it too, so that sucked. Totally screwed up my sleeping cycles.
The hardest thing about nighttime has always been sleep. It's just that everything gets amplified when you try to sleep. Pain that you can deal with during the day can prevent you from feeling comfortable at night when you're ready to sleep. Towards the beginning of all this, I would also have trouble with turning my mind off because I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know what my next step(s) would be, I didn't know what would happen if I lost my job, I worried about keeping my cat, I worried about people not even believing me when my pain and my symptoms were so real to me every minute of every day. My first doctor seemed to suggest I just wanted narcotics, and I was just shocked to even think that's what someone would think of me. What would have brought that on? I had never taken pills before, why would I out of the blue want to sacrifice everything I had worked hard for to get some vicodin that I didn't even know much about? I was ambitious when it came to coaching and I worked hard to not let my teams down, so having people think that I was just being "lazy" or a "drug addict" did not help me relax my way into dreamland.
Now, I've found that not getting enough sleep only leads to me feeling worse, so I've worked hard to not let that be an issue. It comes down to me keeping a schedule, where I try to always get to bed by a certain time, no matter what, along with a couple mild sleeping medications my doctor prescribed me. If I eat dinner early enough and take my pills early enough and try to start sleeping early enough, I've found I can now usually get a good night's sleep. I have rough nights occasionally, but minimizing them has helped me by not letting lack of sleep or insomnia contribute to my symptoms. I know my body is pretty constantly fighting within itself, so I don't want to drain my resources if I don't have to.
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