repost from private blog: sleep stuff

We all know I don't sleep like I should. Even people who have just met me become quickly aware of this. A brief synopsis of how I sleep:
- The idea of a "24 hour day" is the bane of my existence. I'd say a 30 hour day would be fitting for me, but I'm sure I'd only be sleep-functional within that for a brief period as well.
- I generally stay awake until I simply can not any longer. If I try to sleep before then, I just don't sleep.
- When I was in the hospital overnight, I was given Ambien around 2am... and then a second dose; the nursing staff made the note in my chart "made patient hyper". I don't generally mess with sleep aides, though wine will put me in a soporific state, but I don't regularly imbibe.
- I stay up, essentially days on end as, I guess, a result of hypomania. I should probably see a therapist about this. I convince myself I don't actually need sleep.
- On the other hand, there are the days I do virtually nothing but sleep, in which fifteen hours simply will not suffice.
- These days of sleeplessness and hypersomnia absolutely do not seem to be related to each other. It would make sense if I had a few sleepless days followed by a long sleeping spell, but it's just random. In fact, the excesses seem to feed off themselves rather than induce the other. That is, the less I sleep, the more I sleep less and believe I don't need sleep (to continue until I almost quite literally pass out, at which point, I generally sleep 7-8 hours and maintain normalcy for a few days) and the more I sleep, the more I feel compelled to sleep.

Now here's where it gets tricky
I often wake up feeling completely out of breath, and often what I refer to as "bone-crushingly tired" (hooray for made-up adverbs!) This in itself would make me think apnea, especially since it's a familial trait. However, I also have periods when I'm awake during which I experience what I can only refer to as "waking apnea", having no better name for it. I'll exhale, but lack the trigger to inhale, and when I become aware of it, inhaling seems to become laborious and irritatin, which is often accompanied by the feeling that even though I'm inhaling, I'm not properly absorbing the oxygen and feel as though I'm slowly asphixiating (keeping in mind, it's possible I'm delusional).

Where it gets really tricky and all seems to come together
Often surrounding my sleep, there is hallucination (generally auditory) and fear. This had actually greatly subsided this semester as I dropped all but one class (meeting one afternoon per week) and worked mostly only evenings. Essentially, I was able to sleep when I was able for as long as I needed. But today it came back. Typically this is how it goes:

I'm in my dream and notice something a bit off, usually I look in a mirror and my face might look slightly swollen; sometimes there is no impetus, though. Anyhow, what happens is I start to become unable to breathe: either my throat swells shut or I start to pass out. In fact, at one point this was happening so often that while in those dreams I'd remember and tell myself it wasn't real. I've also developed a trick for bringing myself out of those dreams, somewhat akin to the beginning of Kill Bill: since I'm unable to just open my eyes and wake up (I try and it's like they're glued shut, or so heavy) I start by concentrating on wiggling my fingers, then try to gradually rock my body to wake myself.

This works, but half the time only briefly. I'm generally afraid to go back to sleep at this point, so I try to force myself to stay awake, at least long enough to let the episode pass for long enough that it won't repeat, sort of breaking the cycle with consciousness. Often, however, before I know what's happened I'm unable to move and am hearing voices that simply aren't there. Usually the voices are someone I'd norally hear in the place I'm sleeping. Like today was Nate, which is typical. Despite this, they still sound sinister. The last time this happened, Nate was at work, and I'd heard the door open and close and the bathroom being used and thought it was him. I got online for a bit and went back to sleep, later asking him why he came home for lunch, only to find out he hadn't. Today, "he" said something everyday, but it sounded so evil I freaked out and wouldn't let myself go back to sleep.

Sometimes I'll spend several hours in a cycle of those states. Sometimes they're accompanied by delusions, like the night I couldn't sleep because every time Nate moved, I was absolutely sure and frightened that he was going to try to kill me and every time I would start to drift off, he would move. This sort of this has happened very rarely, but is still frightening to say the least. Interestingly, it happens more when I nap, rather than at night.

The most interesting thing to happen this semester, since the "sleep suffocation" stuff stopped for a while (and trust me, those cycles are incredibly traumatic... trauma being an appropriate crosslinguistic pun (re: German)) was that I called in sick to work one day while asleep. Or possibly awake. See, lately, I've had problems with being able to willfully wake myself, even if I have alarms going off every couple minutes for an hour. I often sleep through them, but when I don't, it's like my body wakes up and my brain is still in dream-mode. As a result I'm often late because a brain in dream mode is like pure id, and my id says "sleep, woman! indulge!" and not having cogent functioning, I can't actually reason with myself enough to get up.

Anyway, I've traveled from the point. A few weeks ago, my alarm went off, I pressed snooze a few times, and then called into work because I was incredibly sick. I woke up a few hours later feeling fine, mostly. I remembered calling in sick, and wondered why, before remembering I'd had a dream that I had such a bad cold I could barely open my eyes or mouth to talk. And now with my other sleep disturbance back, I fear this is going to be a rather tormented stretch of time sleep-wise, probably for the next several months. *le sigh*