Quote:
Originally Posted by MommaR
Ty, LTT, I dont think I have many of the symptoms as you have described them. I dont fall asleep easily any time any where. I spend hours trying to get to sleep. I do occasionally snore if I am exceptionally tired but its rare. I do have trouble sleeping, never feel rested and have nightmares when I do sleep.
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Initially when I saw my sleep dr, because I had such awful--crippling--daytime fatigue/drowsiness, he wanted to rule out Narcolepsy. He told me later that there are many types of sleep disorders, and that sometimes he'll have a patient get a proper diagnosis only to find out later on they have an additional sleeping problem,
I hope to everything that isn't me.
I'm not trying to push you to go see someone,
I just wanted to say that even though you don't have the same symptoms doesn't mean there isn't something significant going on. If you have Insomnia for example--which is what it sounds like it might be--that is a legitimate sleep problem. My dr explained to me that ppl come to him saying they had a prob with sleep. He'd ask, "What time do you go to bed?" "I go to bed at 9:00, because that's what time my husband does." "Ok, what time do you get up in the morning?" "8:00am" "Ok, that's almost 12 hours of being in bed. You don't need to be in bed that long if you're not sleeping; it's actually counterproductive." He said that it's one thing to lie in bed trying to sleep but you're not really tired; it's another thing entirely to have disruptions in sleep--tired but can't sleep, waking up frequently, night terrors, etc.--which need addressing.
I hope that makes sense. Something he told me I found highly interesting. He said, "If ppl come to me and say, 'I never remember any dreams' or, 'I remember all my dreams, every night' that tells me they have a sleep problem. It's normal to remember dreams ever so often. But to not have any or an excessive amount indicates the brain is not going through all of the necessary stages of sleep. After the fact, I realized that pre-diagnosis I did remember a lot of my dreams...I would wake up in the middle of one or just after having one regularly, which is apparently not normal.
I want to and like sharing about this because so few ppl know about any of it. I certainly didn't until I went to him. It explained a lot not just for me, but in regards to family members, etc. What really made me respect my doctor is that he felt so certain something was wrong he wasn't going to stop until we got to the bottom of it, regardless of what it took...even if tests proved otherwise.
