I've been meaning to write about sleep for a few days now but the task daunted me. How could I write about such a complex and frustrating topic when I know I'm only beginning to understand it myself? I could write a book on the subject and not get anywhere! That's when I remembered that this is a blog. It's a blog written by a person who openly admits to being sick and having trouble with daily life much less adding in the extras.
This is going to be a running topic like pain control methods. As with most running topics, I believe I should start as close to the beginning as I can. From what I can remember, I've always had trouble getting to sleep. The reasons for that are unknown and the guesses are a little controversial. Therefore, I'm going to concentrate on the effects of sleep or the lack of it.
When I was still healthy, I functioned best on between five and six hours of sleep each night. If I got more than that, I wanted nothing more than to sleep off into infinity. Getting less than that meant fighting to stay awake all day. Because memories fade over time, I'm only including high school until I got sick or, roughly, September 1988 to December 1999 as my healthy time.
Sometimes, I think getting too much sleep is worse than not getting enough. I have allergies and so I suffer from a post-nasal drip while I sleep in bed. A post-nasal drip is essentially a backwards runny nose. Instead of running outward where it can be wiped, it drips down the back of my throat. Without taking this digusting problem into account, I already have an exaggerated gag reflex. My PCP has a blast trying to look down my throat but we both keep a sense of humor about it.
Let's enter in factor number two. I use my CPAP machine when I sleep in bed. It keeps my airway open from my nose to my lungs with the strange side effect of me not swallowing the entire time. I drool an awful lot and I don't swallow the whole time. (For future reference, do not take the term "night" literally. It's rare that I sleep at night but it is tough to avoid using expressions I hear constantly about "a night's sleep.") When I wake up and take off the mask, I tend to have this awful urge to vomit. It's the gag reflex kicking in for the start of my fun.
I have to rush into the bathroom because I am incontinent and I have to cough up everything that's in my throat. Coughing plus a full bladder plus already wearing the Depends for the whole "night" adds up to a fun scenario. Therefore, I try not to cough until I hit the bathroom and I'm ready. After I cough up everything that can be coughed up, I'm left with more that is likely just irritation/imagination. The best thing for dealing with that is a carbonated drink of some sort. There's no endorsement deal or anything but this household prefers Diet Pepsi when it goes on a good sale. Otherwise it's store brand or nothing like this past week when we ran out of money.
That's not some sort of backhanded plea for help. We spent the money and had fun with some of it. In addition, tomorrow (Wednesday) is payday. We will make it yet again. That's what I have to remember after spending an extended time asleep in bed. There's part of me that is convinced dying would have to be better than this trauma of waking up. Once again, don't worry. There's no part of me that will "do something about it." I know that the misery will pass like any other moment of panic.
This is probably a good place to stop. If I go on, I will get into lack of sleep which is a different topic.
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