23 November one of the many dreams... The White Paint in my backpackers

Last night was another bad night for dreams but I will write about just one of them.  There were 5.  I dreamed that I went out for lunch with a friend and when I came back, my backpackers was covered in white paint, but really messily.  My mother was standing there looking very unbothered.  I called one of the workers and said ''I am the owner here, who gave you permission to do this''.  They ignored me and carried on throwing white paint everywhere.  At this point my mother started laughing hysterically and thought it was really funny that I was getting more and more wound up about my backpackers being destroyed by this white paint and that no one would listen to me when I told them to stop.

The Planes Falling Into The Never Ending Hole

Another night of horrificness (is that even a word?)  Tonight I was going to go on an aeroplane.  There was a big centre ball with all different ropes connected to it (as shown in attached illustration).  Each one had a plane on it ready to go.  All my loved ones were in this dream but we were all going to travel in different planes and I had to decide who went into which plane.  My brother Marco, my dad, my friends and some work collegues were amounst the people I allocated an aeroplane to.  Once everyone was in their plane, it was announced to me that some planes would take off from their ropes and others, the rope would snap and the plane would fall into an eternal hole below.  Slowly, one by one the planes started moving but each rope would snap, and the plane would fall, I would see my loved ones look of horror (my little brothers being the one that sticks with me the most) as their plane fell, and then I would look down and see the rope just dangling there into a never ending hole.

Kenilworth Clinic

When I saw the sleep doctor he prescribed me Melatonin, anti-depressants and a muscle relaxant to take at night.  I reluctantly started taking the medication, when I say reluctatly it is because I really wanted to believe up until now that this was a medical problem and not a psychological one.  The pills really didn't help though and so I decided to seek out a psychiatrists help to adjust my meds.  When I went to her, she told me that my medicine was below theraputic quantities, increased my Cipralex and muscle relaxant.  I really didn't feel the difference though and at the same time I had my friendship with my best friend come to an abrupt and unexplained end.  I was really devastated and so moved my follow up appointment with my psychiatrist forward a few days to the same day, and when I went to see her I told her that I had been considering taking myself to hospital as I was being plagued with thoughts of death over the nightmares.  She told me that I needed to be admitted to a psychiatric clinic for at least a week.  A week turned into 3 weeks.  During my time at the clinic I came to realise that my depression was a lot worse than I had thought and that most of my life, the way in which I had dealt with negative emotions was to supress them and distract myself, and that perhaps all these thoughts were manifesting in my nightmares.  I learnt better ways to deal with negative emotions whilst in the clinic, and one really great thing that came out of the time there was that I now have a whole new bunch of friends.  However, my nightmares persisted.  I then got chatting to one of the girls there who suffers from intrustive thoughts disorder.  I asked her to describe her thoughts to me and it was like she was describing my nightmares.  I asked her what medicine they gave her for it and she told me Seroqual.  I brought this up with my psychiatrist in my next session, and she admitted that there is little to no research which has been done on adult nightmares and that perhaps the Seroqual (an anti-psychotic) was worth a try.  So far there has been a minor improvement in the nightmares, but nothing to write home about.  However, the side effects are hectic, I get a very dry mouth, I am very drowsy the first couple of hours of the day and I can't have more than one drink or I get extremely dizzy.  I have had to adjust my work schedule because I can't really drive after 8pm as I take the medication at 5pm.  Also, Seroqual is almost R800 a month.  But I will pay it, because I am willing to do almost anything to make this problem go away.

Seeing the G.P.

I decided my next course of action would be to see my fathers GP, as he trusted him.  I went to see him and explained the situation which had been happening.  He decided to do a thyroid test as this could cause nightmares.  He also tested my iron and did a full blood count.  Each time I see a new doctor, I am filled with hope that this may be the time that I get the answers which I need.  I never consider that it may be another dead end.  Another brick wall.  But the following evening, whilst I was babysitting for a friend, I got a call from my doctor, ''all your results are normal.''  Whilst it sounds like good news, it wasn't what I wanted to hear.  No cause found.  Still symptoms.  Then the bill arrives for R500 for the blood tests.  It grates me no end having to pay and pay and pay and still I sit with nothing but these dam nightmares.

The Rape of the Little Child

I always want to describe my nightmares as ''the most horrific one yet'', but then I realise I can't, because they are all as horrific as another, and like I have mentioned in some of my other posts, I find it difficult to write about them here as I feel like I am re-living the trauma, a trauma I feel like I have actually been through, even though it was just in my sleep.

In this particular dream, I was in a parking lot sitting on the side of the road eating an ice-cream.  A big SUV was parked in front of me and the owner of the vehicle came back to it and opened the back seat and put a young girl, aged about two, into a rear-facing car seat.  He strapped her in and then an evil grin spread across his face as he took a large stick and raped the young child with it.  For some reason I couldn't move from where I was sitting, I couldn't hide or look away, I just had to sit there and watch this horrific scene occur.  I think this dream went on for at least an hour.

The next morning when I went to work and saw the manager who works for me I broke down in tears, I was just so exhausted from the experience of what I had seen the night before.  One would think that with this happening on a regular basis, I would get used to it.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  It just gets worse and worse as the terrors that I have seen just get more and more.

International Sleep Expert...final hope? Or Not?

After the failed homeopathic experience, I decided to do some googleling myself, and I stumbled upon the website of Constantia Sleep Centre, located at Constantiaberg Hospital, only 20 minutes from me.  I was very excited and I sent them the following email:

Hi there

I suffer from terrible chronic

nightmares - up to 4 extremely

disturbing nightmares every night.  Vary rarely have a nightmare-free nights sleep.  Has been going on for around a year.  Is this something which you treat, and would I need to get referred to you or can I just come and see you direct.  Also, what are the costs involved?  I really hope you can help as I am at my whits end.

Thanks

Mel

I was very excited when I received an email back saying that the doctor wanted to see me when he was next in Cape Town, which was in 4 weeks time.  I spent those 4 weeks documenting my nightmares, my sleeping and waking patterns and any potential triggers.  When it was finally time to see the doctor, he saw me for less than 5 minutes and suggested I do a 24 hour sleep study, as he suspected I suffered from narcolepsy.  After doing some research on this condition I was very upset, as it said that 50% of sufferers will end up with dementia, a condition I fear more than cancer.  I was also more upset when it was discovered that my medical aid would not cover sleep studies of any kind and I had to ask my father to pay the R8000 cost of the test.

The actual test itself I found to be rather traumatic and although it may sound silly to some, I still get cold shivers when I think about it.  I had electrodes glued to my head, taped to my face and neck and even had to have two pushed up my nose.  The hospital ward itself was very depressing and it generally just wasn't a nice experience.

The next morning we were woken up at 6am and I was still really groggy and was looking forward to us being able to nap every 2 hours on the study.  However, getting through a whole day watching series on my computer and then being told to sleep again every 2 hours was horrible.  Once we had done the 4th sleep during the day I called the lady who was running the test and asked her if she could tell me anything about my readings on the test.  She told me that I had a 'great' sleep and everything looked normal.  I had one of the biggest breakdowns I think I've ever had, sobbing into the sheets to try stop anyone from hearing me crying.  I was absolutely shattered because I felt like well where to from here.  I know I can't keep living like this but where else can I now search for a solution.  I called my dad to tell him but I was crying so much I could hardly speak on the phone and I don't think he could hear anything I was saying.  

When they finally took the electrodes off my hair I left, got into my car and just started crying again.  If an international expert sleep doctor can't help me, then what the hell do I do now.  Continuing to live with this problem is not an option.

The Death Penalty Dream

This dream came as such a surprise to me.  I was on around day 9 of being on Seroqual and hadn't had a nightmare in 3 nights, and so thought that the medicine was finally working.  So I went to sleep in quite an upbeat mood and ready for a good nights rest.  That was not on the cards for me.  Tonight, a man in my dream was sentenced to death by lethal injection, and I had to watch as slowly but surely, he got his different injections, and slowly he died, his face slowly distorting, slowly showing more pain, more horror.  I can't speak any more about this dream as it sickens me so much.  You can't unsee things.  I woke up from this dream with a violent urge to vomit and ran straight to my toilet.

The Ladder

The ladder is another one of my worst dreams ever, one which I had during my stay at Kenilworth Clinic.  I dreamed that I was out in a garden where there was a big high tree.  A big group of guys came into the garden and decided they wanted to do a dare devil trick.  They went to get a ladder, and leaned it against the tree and said they were going to see how many people they could fit onto this ladder.  I warned them that it was dangerous but they would not listen.  Slowly, they each climbed up onto the ladder.  Once they were all on the ladder, they were all smiling at their achievement, when the ladder came crashing down.  Everyone on the ladder died, all I remember seeing were all the decapatated heads of the boys, still smiling, but slowly the faces started to distort into dementor looking faces, filled with terror, but really looking real.  I woke up from this dream at 4:30am and was so sickened that I could not go back to sleep so read my book until it was time to get up for breakfast.

The Electrocution

This was one of my most awful, horrific nightmares to date, and one which I find difficult to even write about.  I can't recall how the dream started, but myself and my parents had been captured, and the captors decided that my parents were to both die by electrocution from the electric chair.  I had to stand by a wall and watch as they were strapped into the chairs, looks of sheer horror and dread on their faces, and how they were slowly electrocuted and I had to watch the whole slow, agonizing process happen.  I woke up very suddenly from this dream, to find my pillow soaking wet from crying in my sleep.  I got up and went to the bathroom and just wept.  It baffles me that my mind can think up such horrific, disgusting things, and disturbs me of what has been mis-wired in my brain for this to have happened.

Stop 1...The Homeopath

When I started to notice that I was having repeated violent, torture nightmares, I decided to seek out the help of a homeopath.  I figured that if I went to a regular doctor and told him I have nightmares that he would just laugh, and what could he really do?  So I found Dr Ben and had a one hour session with him where I explained everything.  Repeating my nightmares in detail is not something I find easy, as I feel like I have to then re-live the terror.  Nightmares are difficult to explain to others in the fact that when I see terror in my nightmares, its just as good as if I really see those things happen real life.  My dreams are as vivid as if I saw the things for real.  So spending half your day witnessing torture, or being tortured myself, is not something I would wish on my worst enemy.

The homeopath prescribed me 2 bottles of droplets, one to take on the tongue, which tasted really really bad, and one to take in a little bit of water, which didn't taste much better.  I was so determined to be rid of this problem that I whole heartedly believed these droplets would help me, and so happily paid the further R700 for more droplets when they ran out.  There was no improvement, however, and I had to come to accept that this route was not going to work for me.  I didn't go back to the homeopath and one night just decided to stop taking the droplets as I was really wasting my time.  I didn't know it at the time, but this was the first of many many brick walls I was going to hit in a bid to end my journey of nightmare disorder.