View my sleep study story and slideshow.
Isn't that great? I went to the doctor because I'm tired all the time. They did tons of test and told me that... I'm tired all the time. Yeh...thanks! But hey, he's the man with the fancy deree on the wall.
After years of constant exhaustion and countless naps that don’t help a bit, I finally got a doctor to take me serious. I went to a neurologist and had a sleep study done.
The first test was a polysomnogram. It showed that I have “elevated respitory effort related arousals.” That means I have a little trouble breathing when I’m asleep, this disturbs my sleep and keeps me from getting the normal amount of rem sleep. It’s not bad enough to call apnea or hypopnea… I don’t need a CPAP. [A machine to help me breathe while sleeping.] Instead, my doctor prescribed a dental snoring device. I don’t know if I snore or not… but the thing is suppose to reposition the mouth so that the airway stays clear… making it easier to breathe. I’m all about breathing when I sleep. It seems important anyway.
Since I didn’t have apnea, they kept me for a multiple sleep latency test. This measured how long it took me to fall asleep during four naps through out the day. It also checked to see if I went into REM during the 20 minute naps. I didn’t. That’s good! Going into REM during such a short nap would indicate narcolepsy. Thankfully, I don’t have that. But the test did show that I fell asleep within 3 minutes during each nap after a good night’s sleep. Apparently that’s not good. I consider the ability to fall asleep quickly in any circumstance to be a special talent… It’s not that I fall asleep when I don’t want to, like someone with narcolepsy might. I just can choose to sleep anywhere at anytime… and I choose to a lot. Ask my CHBOLC platoon. During officer basic, I slept standing up in the back of the classroom, slept at my desk during 15 minute breaks, and slept in the dirt with my head on my ruck…. anytime we weren’t doing something. My platoon leader shared some military wisdom, “Never stand when you can sit. Never sit when you can lie down, never stay awake when you can sleep” I took this advice to heart.
The thing with hypersomnia is that you can nap all you want. It won’t help a bit… It’s not that I don’t sleep enough at night. I usually do. But I wake up tired. Naps are just as pointless. Sleep isn’t refreshing… but it’s always appealing. No, it isn’t because I’m depressed and want to avoid life. I. Am. Tired. I’ve been saying that for years, now I have scientific proof. The doctor gave me a sample of some very expensive medicine to try. It’s a stimulant that should help with the excessive daytime sleepiness. I’ll let you know if it works… and if my insurance will cover it!
They dont’ actually know WHY I feel this way. Ahh but they gave me a name for it and a couple prescriptions… that’s something! Now I can obsessively research and figure out how to stay awake… I’m sharing all of my research at squidoo.com/hypersomnia.
Editor’s note: Apparently I really am tired. Joel just told me about at least 5 spelling errors in this post. Ugh!
