January 27, 2009

Sleep, where have you gone?

It's only Tuesday and I feel like it's the 100th day in a row without a day off. I don't think I've had a complete nights sleep in over three weeks. I keep waking up at all hours of the night and having weird dreams or horrible nightmares.

Last nights nightmare was a doozie about zombies. For some reason everyone was turning into zombies and I was having to kill them to stop them from killing me. The worst part of it was waking up at 3:30 trying to remember why the dream seemed so familiar and where that zombie noise was coming from. After I woke up a bit more, I realized what I thought was a zombie making zombie noises was Hubbs. Snoring. After a couple of try's I was able to get him to stop snoring and I did go back to sleep but having my sleep interrupted night after night and having weird dreams is about enough to push me over the edge. I'm tired every day, even on the weekends when I do manage to eek out a bit more sleep.

I started taking Ambien 4 or 5 months ago because I was unable to get any sleep. Apparently the weird dreams are a side effect of the pills and are very common. I normally only take the pills during the weeks so I'm able to function at work better but quit taking them about 3 weeks ago. I don't really know why I quit taking them other then I was tired at night again and it seemed like a good idea to not take them if I didn't need them. The first week after I quit was good. I had no problem falling asleep or staying asleep and I don't remember having any dreams. The second week weird dreams started and at about 2 and a half weeks my sleep started getting interrupted. Now I'm tired, cranky and full to the brim with yawns and sleepy watery eyes. Guess I should go back to taking the pills before I drive off the road on my way to work in the morning.

2 comments:

Evil Twin's Wife said...

You might have some sort of sleep disorder. Perhaps the next time seeing your regular doctor, you can bring it up. I'm lucky that I can function on few hours of sleeps and perhaps one short daytime nap. Some people need more than that though.

Lisa said...

You could be right. Growing up my mom would find me at 3 am moving the furniture around my bed room, I never needed more then a 4 or 5 hours but since I turned 30, I seem to want to sleep more but I never sleep straight through. The Ambien was just the first step in trying to figure out what's going on with my sleep cycle. I'm sure I'll figure it out sooner or later.