Sleeping But Not Asleep

Waking up all night and wondering where you are is normal, right? Even though I’m in the same bed that I went to sleep in, I often find myself waking up several times throughout the night not knowing. A quick Google search and WebMD tell me that I am going to die… Uhhh! Time to continue the search.

“Confusional arousals” - this seems like a good article to start at. However; where I see myself in this is article is limited, but a good starting point:

Confusional arousals is a sleep disorder that causes you to act in a very strange and confused way as you wake up or just after waking. It may appear that you don’t know where you are or what you are doing. Your behavior may include the following:

• Slow speech
• Confused thinking
• Poor memory
• Blunt responses to questions or requests

https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders/confusional-arousals/

Obviously, I know what I am doing. Ironically I just forget where I am at, but most of the bulleted list is sometimes me. And the hardest part of coming out of this is that these are also very similarly related to head trauma.

I wonder if there is a connection, I am going to follow up with Doctor Schlorke on this and see what he has!

Talk to a Doc

Sleep is Hard

I love sleep, well, the thought of sleep. “They” said get some sleep…”They” said have kids… “They” said it’ll be fun… “They” probably weren’t people with sleep issues…

I can tell you right when my sleep schedule went to hell in a hand basket. June 2002.

I’d already been stationed in Alaska for a year and had gone through all the phases of no sun for six months, and all light for six months. It’s neat for about 3 days… then it’s time to move on! We had just come off a training cycle and we had been in the field for around three weeks and we were all exhausted. No one wanted to mess around and put our stuff away, but we did. And then we all went to crash. I immediately fell asleep, and when I woke up I felt refreshed. So I got up. Looking at the clock, it stated that it was 6. Thinking I had slept all night and was now running behind, my roommate was not in his room, I hustled and got P.T’s on and ran to the CP. No one was there…

It’s okay to talk to a doctor! Doctors are out there to help - well, most of them. So I have a friend that is a very good doctor and I will discuss this with him. However, knowing that I have this issue waking up makes me think that other Veterans, maybe football players, and other full body contact athletes have the same issues.

I’d slept for an hour. It was not zero six hundred, it was eighteen hundred hours!

Fast Forward 21 Years

Laying in bed, now, trying to figure it out, trying to figure out why I don’t sleep well, or why I have nightmares that I don’t remember. And why I wake up confused. My sleeping pattern is near the same. I’ve done sleep studies, and they have all come back inconclusive.

I believe that my sleep medication helps me not to remember them. And when I’m nightmaring (VFW therapist helped me with that one) my dog, Jax, helps me with that. Jax was trained to wake me up when the nightmares get me tossing and turning. He will bite my ankle just enough for me to wake up. And then he nuzzles me when I wake.

Moving forward and onward. Sleep may allude me, but I will continue to do my best to figure out the next bump in the road and make up for lack of sleep in other areas, perhaps, napping! Naps always make me feel better! There is no worries at that point, my kids are all safe, my wife is near me, and I am feeling

Sleep is a Crutch

Whereas, sleep is a crutch, sleep is necessary and need it more and more as we get older. It still helps heal. Still being an infantryman it’s a crutch! lol Honestly, they say sleep is needed for eight hours a day.

Well, to that note, it’s nap time!

Sleep on my friends!

PRACE