IC My New Life

I have had insomnia for over twenty years. Ambien worked great for me for a few years. Lately nothing seems to work and I am a desperate woman. Sleep brings healing and healing is a precious commodity in my book.

My mind races when I try to fall asleep. No matter what is going on in my life, even if nothing major is going on, my mind has…well, a mind of it’s own.

I have tried a lot of different things over the years to lull my mind into a peaceful night of sleep. I have given up caffeine completely, I have used an app on my tablet to provide white noise, I always use a sleep mask, I have tried gentle stretches, melatonin and prayer.

About three weeks ago, I decided to quit taking Ambien because it didn’t seem to be working for me anymore. I am also trying to quit taking so many medications. I figure my body needs a break!

One night recently, I decided to try a new Melatonin (1^st mistake) and not take any others medications to help me sleep, including Ropinirole that I take for restless leg syndrome (second mistake), then I drank two cups of Chamomile tea (third mistake). I thought if I drank two cups that I would be more likely to get drowsy.  Well it worked, I was drowsy and I fell asleep easily.

My night started off with a nightmare. I had to make myself wake up to quit dreaming this bad dream. At this time I had only had a couple hours of sleep. I was able to get back to sleep only to have a weird dream and wake up needing to go to the bathroom (go figure). After a couple more hours of sleep, I got up again and felt pretty good.

After doing some things around the house for a couple of hours, it hit me like a ton of bricks…extreme nausea!!! The kind that makes you think crazy thoughts and have feelings of hopelessness. Determined not to take any kind of medication, I asked my cat to make me a cup of peppermint tea. Good idea, but she did not move a muscle in her body, and did nothing in an effort to help, lol.

I finally felt brave enough to try to make it to the kitchen to make it myself. I did, but found that I was too nauseated to drink it. I took a Zofran and prayed a sincere prayer that God would have mercy on me and He did!! I was able to fall back asleep for a long nap.

When I woke up I felt dramatically better, and felt ever so grateful to God for answering my prayer. I also felt frustrated that the new Melatonin did not work for me.

Since then I have resolved to the fact, that if I wake up early in the morning, I will stay awake as long as I can and try to accomplish a few things such as reading or checking my email, before I go back to bed for a much needed nap. Prior to this I would wake up around 5:00, take something to try to get back to sleep, toss and turn for a couple of hours and finally get a few more hours of sleep.

I have felt better about my sleep schedule. Maybe I feel better because I’m not taking as many medications or maybe it is the fact that I have tried to just give in to what my body wants. No matter how much or how little sleep I get, I believe that Sleep Is A Beautiful Thing!!

http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-tools-tips/healthy-sleep-tips

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2015 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.