Saturday 12 November 2011

Y......A......W.....N


via weheartit


Since being in hospital I haven't been able to sleep for longer than 3.5 hours at a time.  And that was only once. Most of the time I am waking up every hour or two.  To begin with it was because I was drinking so much water and I kept needing to go to the toilet, then it was because I was in pain.  Now, even though I am drinking less in the evenings and am on stronger pain meds I still wake up very regularly.  Sometimes I can pin point the reason - need to pee, uncomfortable, in pain, MR snoring too loudly, need to cough (and therefore need to sit up, I've ended up with a very chesty cough from my hospital stay and coughing is not a fun thing with a new scar, new liver and sliced open rehealing muscles).  Sometimes I am woken up by MR, on purpose, because I am having a nightmare and making loud noises.  I don't know if this is from the pain killers, from my recent experiences or left over toxins in my brain.  It's not fun though.  Sometimes I just wake up.  For no apparent reason.  I am only sleeping really really lightly, half of the time it feels like I am just dozing and still fully aware of movements and noise around me.

It sux.

I am SO tired.

I have tried napping, not napping, lavendar oil on the pillow, extra pain killers, staying up until tired and only going to bed then, going for a long walk (2km in 30 minutes, I'm still recovering after all).  Nothing is helping.  Poor MR is exhausted as well because more often than not he wakes up if I do, especially if I'm coughing or having a nightmare.

Today I spent the entire day in bed, reading a book and resting.  I had a nap from 12 - 1.20 but still woke up 40 minutes into the nap.

Of course, now it is 11pm and I am wide awake.  Tired, but nowhere near sleep.  I sent MR to bed a few hours ago so he could get in a small block of sleep without being woken up by me.

I really am over it, I've been home almost 3 weeks and apart from the one night with a 3.5 hour block (I was so excited) there has been no relief.

I know I spent just over a month in hospital being woken up for obs fairly regularly but surely my body hasn't developed such a strong habit from that.  I'm over it.  I really really am.

I don't want to take more medication but I'm at the point where I think I'm going to ask about sleeping tablets at my check up on Monday if nothing improves over the next two nights.

Any suggestions are very very welcome!

5 comments:

CurlyPops said...

What dose of prednisolone are you on? That may be part of the problem?

Bek said...

Well, that sounds awful in the extreme! Insomnia is the pits. I haven't been around blog land really for a while, and my a lot has happened in your life!!! You have been through so much!!!

I don't have any sleep advice, you seem to have tried all my tricks. I hope that you get some much needed rest soon. x

Baa-Me Kniits said...

Poor you, just like having a new baby....sorry I have no ideas but maybe Sally will have a few tips ;-)

Sally said...

Go the sleeping pills.
You're on such a cocktail of medications already that you might as well add one more and be done with the mental and physical torture of not sleeping.
Isn't it during sleep that our body builds and repairs??? Your body has some hardcore repair work ahead so go the sleeping pills I say!

2paw said...

There's nothing worse than not being able to sleep and it doesn't take much for your body to get out of synch. I take a calmative, not a sleeping tablet, but it's used for migraines. It just relaxes me enough so I can fall asleep.