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'Martin' wrote on '10:
Being from Oregon, maybe I should get some sound recording equipment and record the rain falling here and give the CDs away to Insomnia Land members?!
I'm actually half serious!
Sounds good to me!
'cherrychapstik' wrote on '10:The only ones that I don't find annoying are any that consistently just play rain. Rain makes me calm and puts me to sleep. Birds and animals make me feel anxious (but really what doesn't these days?). Whenever I hear rain though, it's just… peaceful and quiet. People don't scream outside in the rain usually. You can count on a sort of peace after it's done until the people come out again. I love that feeling.
Love the sound of rain, and the smell of it just starting, and in winter, the smell of moss on th driveway. I also like to fall asleep to its sounds.
'cherrychapstik' wrote on '10:Eating before bed. They say not to eat an hour or so before bed, but I'm hypoglycemic (not diabetic, just the one thing), and not eating makes me wake up at night, hungry. It makes it more difficult to sleep, stay asleep, and go back to bed. So I make a cup of whole grain cereal an hour before I take my ambien. I've found that I don't have as hard of a time not eating when I wake up at 4 and my defenses are down. I don't eat anything with a lot of sugar, just something that will last a few hours!
You're being sensible, as you're eating complex carbs which will not spike your blood sugar. It's the sort of after dinner/before bedtime snakc any diabetic or hypoglycemic should have!
The dictum of not using the bed for anything besides sleep or sex is rather stupdi to me–I've read in bed for decades to help me get to sleep, and because it may be the only time in the day when I actually have a good block of time for it.
At this point, I'm to stay in bed most of the day, due to surgery on a heel with a bone spur. My foot is to be elevated. While at first it was hard to drop off without the remnants of medication/anesthesia in my system, I seem to be able to sleep just fine. It's sitting up comfortably on this marshmallow bed that's difficult!
I'm doing something now that I otherwise don't do, and that's use the computer in this bed. Can't really sit at the table with my leg dangling, or for long with my leg up on the knee-scooter (does something painfully weird to the nerves on the TOP of my foot).
'seenafterscene' wrote on '09:Sorry to hear the Topamax along with the already present post-menopausal issues were interefering with your creativity and word choice and such. I can only hope it improves for you, but I know all too well, that sometimes it just doesn't. Have you considered or are you able to lower your dose at all??? I did that in one case, and noticed I did suffer some stability, but I was able to “get my creativity” somewhat back.
Ah, The topomax I was on was in the peri-peri-menopausal years. I don't know that it touched my creativity, but intellect, yes. I couldn't even take 75mg, and 62.5 mg was as high as I could go and be able to drive safely, with concentration. The next med, trileptal, simply never worked, and after a year, I went to lamictal, which I'm still on.
Marina
My apologies, Mike, if I offended–what I should have said is that your blog might be useful to some, but I myself didn't seem to benefit from it.
Thanks, Martin, for bringing this to my attention.
'cherrychapstik' wrote on '15:Thanks for that Marina. Always nice to know you're not alone. I'm on ambien. I'm about to start taking it only every other day so that I can maybe see how my sleep is during Christmas break with no stressors. Lots of people freaked me out about ambien before I started it, but it's really not so bad. I don't sleep walk/eat/sex/drive. It only lasts for about fourish hours though, and then if my body doesn't want to sleep I'm up for the rest of the night. No dopamax for me! Ambien CR lasts longer, but it's expensive (8 dollars a pill), and I'm waiting on better health insurance to start in January so I couldn't take much.
The fiscal impact of medical treatment is why I'm having my right heel bone spur removed on 31 Dec 10 rather than a convenient time in 2011. New insurance plan is harsher on copays, the deductible before they start paying anything, the medication copays, etc. I had no plans for NYE, anyway–the years we have gone somewhere as a couple, our son has felt left out, but they were not appropriate events for him, and we seem to have stopped going out that night.
I said elsewhere that I had looked at three other insomnia sites, but found them either ineffective suggestions, or self-centered blogs, unlike the setup Martin has created.
I really hope you are able to get some relief.
'seenafterscene' wrote on '15:The PDR is like a book of fun to me, I too can get lost in it. My diagnosis is a bit misleading, because usually I get something like bipolar, but that's not entirely true as I don't necessarily fit the proto-type of that. More often than not though I get a diagonosis of bipolar, some psychosis, multiple anxiety disorders, and chronic insomnia of course.
I'm actually somewhere between “Bipolar NOS” and “cyclothymia”. I am responding to a bipolar's treatment, so my DSMIVR code doesn't matter too much. However, for some studies, I am not bipolar “enough”, probably because my hypomanias are so subtle and fleeting and don't happen before/after each depression, nor do they last for at least 4 days (4 hours, maybe, some of them).
Such fun we live!
seenafterscene writes:
Quote:I haven't been keeping up with Roger Ebert's writings as of late. I've kind of taken a step back from the world of film. I still actively watch, I just don't read as much as commentary and I'm not pursuing it creatively that much…a lot of that was the side-effects of some of my psych meds, but now my creativity is starting to come back so that might change.I know psych meds mess with many folks' creativity/creative outlets, in order to acheive a particular mental balance. I'm currently noticing the difference between post-menopausal memory-connectivity issues and the way they were slammed on Topomax. No comparison at all! I could feel the Stupid Blanket then, and this, mostly word choice issues, where the word starts coming from storage to usage and the signal drops half way–I can work around that a bit, by thinking of things like the word I'm trying to use, until I get around back of it and catch the word I want. No chance of that on topomax!
Quote:As for the kind of film I enjoy…I pretty much enjoy and watch everything. I watch a lot of the mainstream blockbuster movies, but more often than not I am watching a lot of smaller, indie and non-indie films. I really like perceptive character studies or films with an innovative plot structure, though visuals are something unique to film too, so I enjoy films with good visuals too (not just special-effects, but aesethetically pleasing shots.)Oddly enough, Tangled's visuals were handled pretty well–hair, skin tone, water–but the Disney bit about eyes being (in at least one case) a full half of the character's face, still stinks. I really enjoyed the way Rapunzel was able to fend for herself, either with a cast-iron pan, or with getting baddies (except her “mother”) to act on/with the better parts of themselves. Doesn't always take brawn to save a princess.
We watched the Millenium/Girl Who… movies. I'm told they are very faithful to the books. Those were hard films to watch–to make? I don't want to go there–and I don't think I can bear to read the books. The sex was not supposed to get you aroused sexually, but in anger, in disgust, of what Lisbeth had had to endure at the hands etc of those who should have protected her and taken care of her. I would like to see more films with that actress–she conveys so much with so little.
Hoping to see Narnia and Black Swan this weekend. ANYthing Tilda Swanton does is worth watching, for her work alone, if naught else.
'cherrychapstik' wrote on '15:I sit up at night crying after three hours of lying in bed–I used to get out of bed, but now I'm so exhausted that it's hard for me to do so– and during the day I feel like a zombie.
Negatives: We are going to his family's for Christmas, and I'm terrified of slowing them all down and them thinking I'm this big party pooper, because I have no energy at all. Mood swings, hysterical crying. Depression. Let's see…. I used to have problems sleeping, but never like this. I wonder if it will ever end.
Between my long depressions, and the medications I've been on for bipolar disorder, my reading speed has dropped by about 1/3, and (definitely the psych meds) slowed my processing speed, as well. Avoid topomax, if it is prescribed for you–it has a nickname of “dopomax”, because for many people, it interferes, more than most p-meds, with your short-term memory and word choice. My concentration went down, but I did get some lovely sleep, in the two years it worked for me as a mood stabilizer. YMMV. However, my son shows none of these symptoms, and he's on it for migraine prevention.
I wrote this around 1996:
In 1986 I had a period of 4 months where I could not get to sleep before 3 or 4 am, and had to rise at 6 am. Maybe once a week I would have a 6 hour night, usually on the weekend. I was so groggy it was a miracle I didn't have an accident on the freeway or in the kitchen. A major portion of my marriage has been spent sleeping in rooms other than the one “our” bed is in. For a while after my son's birth, I was so often on the edge of utter exhaustion that I was falling asleep while he nursed. I began to understand what the sleep wormhole looked like, and how to aim towards it, but lately, I can't even get in the same quadrant of the galaxy. I get to sleep more than 3 hours if I'm already on the edge of total exhaustion AND neither the cat nor the baby nor anything else makes a lot of noise, or nothing is aching, or my bladder isn't begging to be emptied.
Imagine the vacations–I have to sheepishly explain to someone why they have found me on the dining room floor in the morning, or I've slept on bathroom or entryway floors, and occasional closets of otherwise nice motels or hotels. I've had fights in the small hours about wanting to go someplace else just so I have a chance of getting an hour or two of dozing. I am unwilling to pay for separate quarters, and ashamed that I need it. I know I'm going to be crabby because I didn't sleep (or not enough) and resentful of those who did, and wishing desperately for the problem to go away. Every trip is overshadowed by the sleeping issue and the dread of the white nights.
Yes, I understand what you go through. I hope you are able to get help soon.
BTW, due to my c-section, I wasn't able to lift my son for a while after birth, because I was supposed to avoid carrying anything over 5 lbs. I didn't find the slider arms comfortable, so I nursed in bed, with A at the center of the bed, so he couldn't roll off. No danger to him when I fell asleep–he usually did too.
cherrychapstik writes:
One out of the four people I've talked to scared me half to death about taking Ambien and made me feel like a drug addict. He was older, and I've heard this is common in older doctors.
Sure is!
The rest of them said with the severity I am experiencing insomnia it would be a good idea for me. My counselor said, “If someone broke their leg, would you tell them not to use crutches? Your sleep is broken right now, and this might be your crutches. Sleep is the most important thing right now. We'll worry about the pills after you get it.”
Same for depression & other mental illnesses, only insulin for diabetics is the framework there. Wise counselor!
My doctor (not the old guy. I only went to him once) said, “Are sleeping pills the best thing? No, but if you had to be on them for the rest of your life it wouldn't be the worst thing ever. If that's the only way for you to get any sleep, I see the pros outweighing cons.” You should talk to your doctor. They aren't for everyone, but if it's serious enough they might just be for you. You hear a lot of terrible things people say about them, but I'm telling you that if I hadn't taken them I'd be sitting at an hour of sleep a night. I still don't sleep that well, but the four or so hours they give me is precious.
I'd grab anything legal if it helped me sleep. I seem to have found my method to turn off my active brain, and thus sleep longer, if not better.
'Martin' wrote on '28:As for the scented eucalyptus oil, that sounds really good regardless of whether you can sleep or not. I love that smell!
Keep it away from me, please! The pollen loves to live in my sinuses, and it makes my husband snore VERY loudly. The scent makes me very ill.
One of the top considerations for a house when we were looking in 1997 and then 2003-4 was that there were no eucalyptus trees within sight.
'seesarahwrite' wrote on '21:seenafterscene — i'm with you on the temperature. i HAVE to have a blanket. if it's too warm then i cool the room down. i can't be too hot or cold or it's over.
It may be the weight, but yes, I MUST have a blanket over me. A sheet doesn't really work. On the very hottest nights, here w/o AC (just ceiling fans and a very noisy attic whole house fan (most MRIs are quieter), it's good there's a pool I can just sink into until I get chilly. Before that, cold showers helped a bit. Lying under a damp but not drippy sarong, bath sheet, or even a cover sheet helps in extreme circumstances, like tent/cabin camping.
I suppose I don't really get to sleep until my feet (especially) are warm enough, but getting warm is so seldom the issue with me. Needs to be 65F or below in the room, with some air movement–ceiling fans were in all the bedrooms when we bought this house.
'seenafterscene' wrote on '21:In my case, I like to have “white noise” and the coolness of a tower fan, even on cold days, the cold combined with being under a mild amount of blankets, makes me feel AWESOME snuggled up, but it is also aids my slumber in both temperature and sound.
I don't need the white noise, and in fact, I'd rather not have it at all. However, the temperature thing, I'm right there. Cool face, cool room, snuggly pile of blankets! Dog or cat sleeping against you helps, too–at least for naps.
'Mike wrote on '12:“I think there really needs to be more guidance for parents when it comes to coping and helping children with unusual sleeping habits.”
I agree, Martin. I have a friend whose 15-year-old daughter is now suffering from insomnia. He really doesn't know what to do for her. Since I didn't have this problem when I was 15, I couldn't give him much advice. About all I could do was offer moral support. I'm sure he would appreciate some help from someone, anyone in his present situation.
First suggestion would be to find a good sleep clinic. Many medical schools have them. I'm assuming the young woman is not apneac, so avoiding sleep clinics run by pulmonologists only is a good start. Another thing I might try is a pediatric neurologist–we're seeing one for my son's migraines.
Talk to the woman herself, and get her to describe what happens when she tries to sleep, how long it's been going on, you know the drill. She might say something that hits on something in this forum or blog, and that would be a start toward relief. I *did* have this problem at 15. I'd be happy to talk to her directly by email, if her father thinks it's ok & would help.
