Losing Hope Again

So my nightmares have been back for a good month now.  The random 3 weeks that they stopped for were amazing, and gave me a bit of a morale boost but that boost has long fizzled out now.  They are back, and they are so bad I'm struggling to cope.  Scratch that, I'm not coping at all.  Friends and family ask me all the time how I cope and I always say ''Well I have to''.  And that is honestly the truth.  I have to cope.  Because what is my other option?  Suicide.  That is my only other option and one which I am not willing to take just yet because I don't know what happens on the other side, and it could be worse than this.  So I am stuck in this.  Stuck in hell.  No getting out.  My body is aching I'm so exhausted.  I'm seeing double.  I nearly drove off the road this evening because I zoned out from the fact that I was driving.  But my business needs me.  My staff need me to be there and fully present.  So I fake it...fake it till you make it right?  Not working, but no other options.  There are no more doctors who can help me.  No more people to try.  Nothing.  There is no hope.  No nothing. NOTHING.  Just this hell.  I just want it to end.  How can something like this be incurable?? HOW??? And FUCK people who want to talk to me about god.  I don't believe.  No thing or being which I am supposed to love and praise would do this to me.  I know I have a lot to be grateful for, I don't have cancer, no one close to me has died (except one friend a few years back), and I am grateful for that.  All I want is to be the happy person I really am inside.  But that's not going to happen when I don't sleep.  I am so exhausted all I want is sleep, but I also know in my life what comes with sleep so I'm not going there.  I've stopped telling my friends all the time when I am struggling.  They don't deserve to constantly be brought down with me.  If I go down, I go down alone.  They don't deserve to feel bad because I'm suffering.  I just want out of this, OUT.  LET ME OUT!!!!!!!!!!

Little Nursery School of Torture

So as I feared, my break from my nightmares was short lived, 3 weeks, and I have just woken up from a next level nightmare. Wake up, throw up. Luckily I made it to the toilet. I don't care to go into detail but it involved me being forced to pin down my 9 year old brother whilst he was being tortured in various ways by intruders. Him and other children who were all at this nursery school. It went on for so so long. 

I'm done. 

Could this actually be it??

So something great has happened.  I think I may finally have found a solution to the awfulness which is nightmare disorder. When I saw my psychiatrist 5 weeks ago she decided to revisit a previous treatment which I tried, which was Pratsiol. It is an older medication used to treat hypertension (high blood pressure). I have been on it before; but a very low dose. And in combination with a very large amount of other medications.  My psychiatrist decided to give it another go.  A week later when I saw my endocrinologist she prescribed me Trepaline.  It is a drowsy anti-depressant. It seems that in combination, these 2 medications are finally having an effect.  The Trepaline is making me very drowsy at night, thus making me "too tired" to have a pre-bed freak out and so decreasing my anxiety before bed.  The Pratsiol is making me quite hazy in the mornings so sometimes I'm aware that I had a bad dream but I can't quite remember what about, so no waking up shouting, crying, vomiting etc. Also, the nightmares which I do remember, are much more realistic, such as real work pressures which I'm having at the moment. Not these crazy, twisted, torture dreams. But I find myself waking up, remembering the dream, but then just getting up and getting on with my day. Not taking at least an hour to come down to earth from the meltdown which I'm used to following sleep. 

Could this be it?

I'm so so so petrified to believe it may be.  This has been the longest, hardest, most horrific journey which I've ever had to endure. And it will take me months if not years to recover from this. That's if it is actually over.  I don't believe anyone will ever truly have any comprehension of what I have endured over the past 3  years with this disorder, but I really have some beautiful amazing friends who have truly held my hand through it. Klara - always been there for me every step of the way without any speck of judgement for any of my decisions in the way that I've chosen to deal with this. She has truly been my rock during this journey and I can never express my gratitude enough!!

Hannah, Tamsin, Caroline, Simone, Sian, Tara, thank you so so much for everything.

This is finally a happy post. And whilst I'm so hesitant to actually believe this may just be it, I have to hold onto hope. That's what I've done this whole time and it's honestly the only reason I'm still alive today. Even if it doesn't last, I'll at least use this time to actually be able to live. One can only hope :)

The Spaceship of Torture

Last night I dreamed I was on a space ship that was headed one way for Mars.  I panicked and freaked out because I didn't want to go on it.  I wanted to go home.  The people on the spaceship told me I can go back but then first I needed to go through the torture chamber on the spaceship.  I saw a little sign that said TORTURE.  I pressed the red light and stepped inside.  Suddenly, a machine grabbed all my limbs and started pulling them apart.  I felt the pain in the dream.  I was then shoved into a hole that was too small to fit my body so I couldn't breathe properly and was being squashed.  I again I felt this very real pain in the dream.  This dream sounds short but it was incredibly dragged out.  I just don't have the energy to put all the details.

The Endocrinologist Results

I took a while to write this post since I wanted to calm down from the whole experience first.  I was away in Hogsback at a conference for a week, during which I had an absolutely petrifying nightmare about men chasing me with sticks wanting to rape me, whilst chanting the whole time.  I woke up by sitting up suddenly, to see my friend who was away with me shouting my name trying to wake me up because I had been crying in my sleep.  It was 04h40 in the morning and that was it for my nights sleep, and I had 8 hours of conference activities to attend that day.  So at this point I was really excited to get back to get to the endocrinologist for my results.

Monday came and I was filled with dread because I knew it was going to be bad news either way.  Either, I'd be told I had some horrible condition, or I'd be told everything was fine and then still be left with no answers.  Turns out is was the latter.  The doctor slowly went through each thing that they had tested me for, which led me to believe they had found something because otherwise I thought she would start with ''great news, no problems on your blood work.''  But no.  She slowly went through each thing.  The only problems they picked up were that my Vitamin D levels are 18, they should be a minimum of 30.  And in my diabetes test, the second sample of blood my sugar was slightly higher than expected but ''nothing to worry about.''  I literally fell to the floor sobbing.  My doctor handed me a tissue and tried telling me it was good news because ''Cushings Disease in itself is a nightmare''.  This didn't make me feel any better.  I don't care what it is, I want to know what's wrong with me and I want to do something about it.  She then asked me when I'm seeing my psychiatrist again, so I knew what she was really thinking.  I left with a prescription for Vitamin D supplements, ran to my car so no one would see I was crying and once I got into my car I just broke down.  It took me 40 minutes before I felt able to drive.  I called my dad to tell him the results but had to call him back later because he couldn't hear what I was saying I was so hysterical.

So where to from here?  I don't know.   I honestly can't think of one more doctor I could possibly try.  So this is why I was just so so devastated.  Because I honestly don't think that I have any more options to try, and I am in a lot of debt with all these doctors bills.  The initial endocrinologist consultation and then the follow up cost me R2400 and my medical insurance only gave me R425 back.  Luckily they covered all the pathology. 

It is an extremely scary thought that at 26 years old I am faced with living (if all goes well) another 60 years...with this nightly terror.  Its hard to wrap my head around it, really.  I don't know what I can do now.  I know I will not give up in my search for answers.  Even if it takes me my whole life, I will find the cause of this, so I can at least help someone else with it.

Kidnapped in Uganda

I have a friend who lives in another city who is in a wonderful marriage, they've been together 10 years and married for 4 and I've never seen a more in love couple before. They have a little daughter who is almost 2 and she is 7 months pregnant with a boy. 

Last night I has a very disturbing dream. I dreamed that I went to see her and she was doing a TV interview and her and her husband were saying that their hope was that the baby wouldn't be born deformed.  I was very confused but then slowly information came together. I heard that she had gone on a trip to Uganda and had been kidnapped by some group of pirates there. When they got to the prison (and footage of this was shown) a lot of the men were tied up and naked and were being repetitively raped by other men. The woman were being chased by men who were going to be raped to. My friend was there. It then dawned on me that this baby that she was pregnant with was not her husbands but one of her kidnappers.

The Endocrinologist

I went to see an endocrinologist yesterday.  I was there for almost 2 hours.  In short, she is concerned about 3 things.  Thyroid function, possible diabetes and the possibility of Cushings Disease.  Cushings Disease was the one she was most concerned about.  She asked me a whole lot of medical questions and then gave me a fairly extensive physical examination.  She has ordered a fair amount of pathology work to be done which involves me taking urine samples to the hospital for the next 2 days and then on Thursday evening I can't eat after 10pm, then at 8am on Friday I have to be at Pathcare, where they will be performing 4 seperate blood tests on me over the span of 2 hours, in between which I will have to drink glucose syrup on an empty stomach.  I have a friend who has had this test before and said she felt really sick for the rest of the day.

This entire journey I have been really desperate for an answer, but I'm scared of this diagnosis.  It would involve surgery, medication and potentially radiation.  15 in 1 million people have it.  How crazy would it be if all this time I had such a rare disease.  However, I have had so many doctors tell me that ''you have this'' or ''you have that'' that I'm trying not to think about it too much.

Of course last night I had repetitive nightmares about blood tests so I feel like I've already had them.

Goodbye My Friends

This dream I had a while ago, whilst I was at the Boom music festival in Portugal.  It was on my first night there and I was as happy as could be so I was so confused that I would have such a disturbing dream.  Two of my best friends in Cape Town (I prefer not to mention names on my blog for privacy for my friends) came and sat me down and told me that they were going to be moving away to Namibia.  I was really really sad about this because I see a lot of them and I was devastated that they weren't going to live up the road anymore.  I said goodbye to them and off they went.  In Namibia, they lived in a high rise apartment which somehow I could still see in my minds eye, even though I was still in Cape Town.  I continued with my life but was very sad all the time that they were not around but I continued to be able to constantly see (in my warped dream state) this high rise apartment block that they were living in.  One day, the apartment block slowly - like in slow motion - began to crumble to the ground.  Slowly it fell, and somehow I knew that my friends were in there.  As if to stick with the theme, I slowly started to try to scream in horror, but the scream wouldn't come out.

Whilst trying to scream in the dream, I managed to scream myself awake back into real life.  It was just before 6am and I'd likely disturbed all the people in the tents around me.  I opened the inside zip of my tent and just stared out at the party.  I had to wait 2 hours for my friend to wake up at a normal time, whilst all I really had to contemplate was this dream I'd just had.  I panicked because I still had 6 nights ahead of me at this party, knew that it was going to be taxing on my body between the heat, dancing, constant music and uncomfortable mattress and really stressed out about this being added to the mix too.  Of course, the nightmares continued for the rest of the party, but this was definitely the worst one. 

Just another night of horrors.

I'm going to try piece this one together through my tears because I can't stop crying this morning after what I just experienced. I was out in some sand dune with pretty much everyone who was important to me in my life. Friends, family, parents etc. I was sitting on the dune and all these little light aircraft planes were flying past. Suddenly, one exploded in front of me. I realised it was carrying my dad. Slowly the plane disintegrated into sand but my dad's head flew out the plane and slowly distorted as it fell to the ground. Quickly someone ran to me and told me I had to make little planes for everyone to fly in and right either A B C D E or F at the top on the wings. Then I'd give each of the people who were there (my loved ones) a plane to fly in and then I had to choose the letter of which plane took off.  I did it quickly as I did not want the others to die as well. Once I started calling out the letters, the planes began taking off. I then glanced to the left and there was a mean looking woman sitting against a wall glaring at me. Everytime I called out a letter, I'd glance over to her to get approval but she would look at me, give me some evil type grin and shake her head, then I'd look forward and the same process would be repeated with what happened to the plane my dad was on. Each plane as well near missed me when crashing so I was sure I was going to fire as well. 

Over and out, just another night in my life.

You have HIV

This was a strange dream. But one that left me waking up screaming my lungs out. I was exhausted last night as I've just come from 22 hours of travelling back to South Africa from London and so didn't think getting to sleep would be a problem. Well I dreamed that I went for my annual Gynae check up and I then got a text message from the doctor saying HIV test - positive. The pack of the screen was red. The rest of the dream was pretty much me just continuously screaming, breaking down, crying. Until I eventually screamed myself awake. 

I know I don't have HIV, as a South African it's just one of those things you get tested for regularly. So why I would dream something like this is beyond me. 

Having this nightmare disorder has really started to screw with my perception of reality as well. I've found when bad things happen to me in real life now, like when my wallet got stolen, I ask friends to pinch me or slap me because now I'm always just convinced I'm having a nightmare. Not being sure whether you are awake or asleep really makes you feel like you're going crazy.

Thanks for taking my holiday

I've been on my long saved for holiday of a lifetime for the past 3 weeks, staying in the UK, Portugal and The Netherlands. I've had a wonderful time, being back with my friends, sightseeing, doing things but it's been slightly tainted by one thing. My nightmares have been worse than ever whilst I've been here and of course this has led to a low mood as well as lack of energy to do the things I came here to do. It is incredibly frustrating when you have spent thousands of rands on a trip of a lifetime for yourself and it is spent dealing with this shitty disorder. It is my 3rd last day in London and I've been awake since early as I was having terrible nightmares and then I decided I had no desire for another one so I just stayed up. This means that during my great plans I have for today though I won't have much energy and will be tired and probably just want to come home. I'm just over having this in my life. Fuck you nightmare disorder. Fuck you.

The roads I've walked to find an answer

The Doctors I've Seen , medications I've taken and Tests I've Endured In The Hope of Finding Help:

- a natural energy healer

- a clinical psychologist

- an international sleep specialist

- a 24 hour poly sonogram done by the sleep specialist

- thyroid function testing done by my GP

- melatonin

- 4 different anti-depressants

- anti psychotics

- benzodiazepines

- reiki

- an EEG

- an MRI

- full blood count

- hypnotherapist

- homeopath

- sleeping pills eg stilnox

- dietician

- sleep specialist in Durban

- weekly councelling with a social worker for 8 months

- 3 weeks in one of the countries best psychiatric clinics

- dream interpreter

- TRE practitioner who I saw for 6 private sessions

- TRE practitioner also did an energy clearing

- psychiatrist

- neurologist

- 24 hour EEG with video monitoring done by the neurologist

- ER specialist after I ended up in casualty with a twitch in my arm that wouldn't stop 

The Voice Recordings

As mentioned in my previous post I have needed to start taking sleeping pills some nights.  One of the main 'symptoms' of taking a sleeping pill is that you don't remember much the next morning of what you did after you took the pill.  This morning I was eating breakfast and playing around on my phone when I came across some voice recordings which I had made for the past few nights.  They were all done more than an hour after taking my sleeping pill and were extremely distressing to listen to.  I was crying in most of them, wondering why I still couldn't fall asleep, or some of them saying I was totally exhausted, but still trying to fight the sleep off.  I've started reading a book on Lucid Dreaming and one of the mean things I need to do to try and achieve lucidity in my dreams is keep a dream journal.  I decided to do voice recorded ones as it is easier and I found these recordings amoungst the dream ones. 

My friend Benzo

I haven't written in almost a month because I wasn't sure if I wanted to put the last month's events out there on the internet.  But in the name of keeping this blog real, up to date and using it to try and get awareness of this problem out there and hopefully find somebody out there who can help me, I will update.

After I saw the neurologist, he prescribed me 3 Urbanol a day.  Urbanol is a benzodiazepine, a rather addictive psychiatric medication.  I realized quite quickly that they weren't working but continued to fill my prescription 'just in case.'  I didn't see the harm as I was prescribed this medication anyway.  About two months ago, I reached a complete and total breaking point.  Spending every night - the two to three hours before bed - going bezerk in my house, crying, screaming with frustration, fighting sleep to the death - this was no longer an option.  I can't go through that every night of my life, then wake up and go to work as if nothing is going on, then from lunch time already be filled with dread about the impending freak out followed by night of demons coming to visit.  Waking up and throwing up, sometimes for up to two hours, was no longer an option.  So, I started taking benzodiazapines - or benzos.  Since I have quite a collection of medication built up from about a year of psychiatric treatment, I just took whatever I felt like every night.  I have never taken a dangerous amount, just enough to zone me out so that I don't have the energy to have a freak out and therefore just go to bed because I'm exhausted.  It doesn't stop the nightmares, but it stops the pre-bed freak out, which in itself is often way worse than the actual nightmares.  I have also taken sleeping pills some nights, but since I sometimes get 2am calls from work and the Stilnox makes me completely switched off, this isn't really something I want to take as I need to be able to get up in the night if the need arises, so it just stresses me out more to take them.

I know that this is not a sustainable or healthy option but right now it really is the only way I can operate.  I know that it isn't in my best interests long term but I'm sick of trying to deal with this long term.  My parents think I may have a thing called Gut - Psychology syndrome where poor gut health causes psychological problems.  I am trying my best to change my eating habits, get to the gym more frequently and have started taking daily pro-biotics.  However that's not going to help me TONIGHT.  Tonight, I want to sleep and not freak out.  It does worry me that I will develop a dependency problem on these pills, in fact I probably already have one, but I see it this way - of all the problems this nightmare disorder could have caused, this is pretty mild. 

I am taking steps to try find more solutions to this problem (although there are very few steps left to take).  I am going to see an endocrinologist in September as I want to check if I have any hormone imbalances.  I have started trying to meditate every evening, even though I find it very difficult and often get emotional.  The meditation has also led me to develop an interest in Buddhism so I am spending time reading up on it.  This disorder has caused me to majorly stray from Christianity, the religion which I was brought up in, as I don't see a God of love doing this to his creation.  Whilst I don't think I'll ever become a full blown Buddhist as I can't see myself committing to some of their core beliefs for example re-incarnation (once is more than enough for me!) a lot of their teachings are useful, calming and could have a positive impact on my life.  I am also going to where I call home - London - for a month at the end of July.  This is where I am just purely, blissfully happy and I am hoping that this trip helps a lot with this problem.  I'm hoping that I won't need any sleeping medication whilst I am there and that will help the problem a lot when I get back.

So that's where I am right now.  I'm still not even feeling sure about writing this post but this is my life and if someone out there has the same problem as me - I want to keep this blog as much of a realistic reflection of my life as possible. 

The end of life

In the midst of all this disaster with my sleeping, I have lost my way religiously completely. One thing that scares me is death though, because what if I "pick" the wrong religion and then I burn in the fires of hell? Well, last night I was with some friends, 2 kids I used to au pair and one of my housemates. We were all chosen to be shoved into a room because it was time to end all of our lives. I became petrified because I didn't know what was going to happen when I died, because I hadn't "chosen" a religion. I began praying frantically, then doubting that that was what I needed to do. At this point in the dream I  remembered that I have nightmare disorder and started wishing that this was a nightmare and that I wasn't really dying. Little did I know I was but people around my that I knew and loved started laughing because they all knew where they were "going" because they had their religious beliefs. 

Woken up at 07h05 after taking a sleeping pill and too scared to go back to sleep. Feel sick to my stomach as usual.

The stadium

I had a friend who worked in the Cape Town stadium and I was good friends with her partner so we decided to to eat dinner up on a hill and then wait for her partner to finish work and come and join us. As it approached the last 5 minutes of her partners shift and we knew she would still be in the stadium, suddenly the whole stadium lit up, incredibly loud music started playing and the whole stadium started bouncing around the city of Cape Town, it was just bouncing and twirling like a ball and me knew she was in there and there was no way she could be surviving this.  An eerie quiet came over the city and we knew that everyone in that stadium was dead.

Not coping.

I can honestly say that I am just not coping at the moment with all this and I just don't know what to do about it.  I mean, I'm not coping, I'm exhausted, I'm constantly crying, but there isn't anything that I can do about it.  I can't just decide that I'm not coping.   I have to just get on with it.  I don't have any other options to go to except when I reach the nights where I really can't do it anymore and I just swallow a couple of benzodiazepines and pass out so I don't deal with the nightly 3 hours of crying and thrashing around my room.  I know this isn't healthy and it just compounds the problem in the end but some nights I just can't face the craziness and need a night off of it.

It didn't last very long

It didn't last very long and I knew it wouldn't. After a welcome break of a few nights I was thrown back into a dream where I was running away from a fire as I could feel my skin melting away. It was extremely hot and I felt this heat clearly in the dream. 

A good week

So I've had my first good week in ages. It's so strange though when I have a good night I'm too scared to get excited about it because it never lasts. So to have four good nights in a row I don't really know what to do with myself.  One thing I have noticed is that I'm so happy during the day, I'm excited to get to work in the morning and put my ideas into practice, I'm excited to see my staff. I'm productive, I'm happy, I want to do things in the evenings. But at the same time it makes me sad because I know it won't last and I just see how much I can do and how happy I can be when I actually sleep that that then in turn makes me really really sad that it can't be my normal reality. My staff and friends noticed the change in me and I want to be like that everyday but most other days it's just a mask and it's so so hard to keep that mask on all day, I'm often not successful. Even my suicidal thoughts have completely disappeared. I don't want to jinx anything but it's 2am and I'm about to head to bed and just really hoping the universe gives me just a few more good nights. It's so wierd going to bed and not being petrified, just literally a case of okay I'm tired now therefore I'm going to bed. Is this how everyone else lives? Oh if only!!

Death again

Last night I dreamed that a friend of mine who has a baby had to die by death penalty for something she didn't do. That in itself was bad enough. But then her little 3 year old child had to hold the lethal gas mask over her face. We both watched her die there. Then, I was left with the child and all of a sudden arrested myself with the child. I'll stop there. Too horrific. Woke up this morning throwing up and have now been awake for almost 2 hours but still wanting to run to the bathroom everytime I think of it. I'm seriously done. 

Hello Mozart

Well I never ever thought id find a use for classical music, but here I am giving yet another thing a try....I downloaded a wack of his music and have spent the last 2 hours in bed trying to relax and fall asleep to it. No not working. 1am. The mind gets a bit cray cray....meh. How long can I avoid sleep for tonight I wonder

Losing it slowly....

I'm going crazy .... I'm seriously losing my fucking mind. I'm so tired I'm sobbing. And I could fall asleep in 5 seconds if I wanted to. But I don't. Cos I know what lies on the other side. And I can't go there. I WONT go there. So I stay awake. And as the night goes on I get more and more delusional. Throwing things around my room. Growling with frustration. And tomorrow I need to go to work and make like all is okay. I can't tell anyone about my night. They don't care. They don't want to hear about it because it's all they've been listening to for months. Years. So I'll go starkers on myself here. And tomorrow just have to pull it all together again. And tomorrow night we shall meet again. And the cycle will continue. This will never stop. Not until in death will I be freed from this hell. 

Do I go out just to avoid sleeping?

I have found myself lately going out a lot more than I used to...at first I think this was from coming off the medicine and finally actually being awake at night and wanting to do stuff. But steadily I'm finding myself going out when I'm really not in the mood because I feel that it's better than the alternative which is sleeping with which comes dreaming. I can only distract myself for so long though, eventually I will need to sleep. That, sadly, is inevitable every night. 

Poem about nightmare disorder

A poem I found on Instagram which describes nightmare disorder really well

It's always the same but never alike

Things you'd not believe appear every night

Only barely human, nearly morphed into a beast

Or disfigured faces that upon your fear feast

No telling what shows next, no thing of flesh or bone

Stirring in the shadows, I'm no longer safe at home

This anticipation has me fearing sleep

For what ever happens

They'll find me in my dream

The Choice

Each night I have two decisions, exhaustion or hell.  Hell would be sleep, because that's what my nightmares are. And with sleep, the nightmares will come. Each night I make that decision but sadly I can't go through a night without sleep, so it always ends up back in hell. I guess I just decide how much hell I'm willing to go through, the trade off being exhausted the next day. I really feel like an early night tonight cos I have to be up early for a birthday thing tomorrow. So some extra hell I guess. Thinking I may set my alarm for 4am to knock off my REM sleep cycle. Oh the joys of having this I curable disease. 

The Australian airplane disaster

When I first woke up this morning it took me about 5 minutes to remember my dream and when I did, I just started sobbing uncontrollably and have been for the last hour. 

I dreamed that I was in Australia visiting friends when we were standing out in the Sydney harbour and a plane started coming down very low.  It knocked on a lap post and you could see that the pilot was trying to get control of the plane but he couldn't. Then, the plane went down into the water and just three people came to the surface, the rest were all dead.  One of the survivors told me I should deep see dive to go help save the other people so I did, only for one of the corpses to rape me.

I miss you

This probably isn't really a nightmare but this morning I've woken up feeling really really sad. In September 2013, my best friend of 2 years, with who I did everything and shared everything, decided to stop talking to me completely out of the blue and has never given me an explanation as to why. It has really knocked me emotionally because I have no idea why she did it and I lost my best friend overnight, as well as her little one year old son. 

So last night I dreamed that I went to the super market and bumped into her and her boyfriend, who I was also really good friends with.  We spoke for hours and she gave me some sort of explanation and then invited me over for a braai at her house.  

So just feeling a little sad this morning that it wasn't real. But definitely better than having a nightmare!!

The Spiral

Having had this nightmare disorder now for going onto 3 years, and having tried every treatment in the book, I decided that I'll give the power of positive thinking a try.  I figured that if I make my days as amazing as possible, start going out more, doing fun things, enjoying my weekends and not going to work, that perhaps that positivity would filter through into my night times too.  It worked for about a week but now I've had 3 really bad nights and I feel myself slipping back into the spiral of as I get tired and start falling asleep, I wake myself up forcibly and start crying because I just want to sleep but I know what will happen if I do, and then I wake up really early, exhausted, but am too scared to go back to sleep.  Cos there are no maybes with my dreams anymore, I WILL have them and that's not negative thinking, that's reality.  I have been so exhausted at work this week and I feel myself slipping back into that spiral again but I am really trying very hard to stay on the positive path.  I have come to realise that by vocalising what this is doing to me, how it is killing me slowly, I am only losing friends, as they either don't care to hear it, or its too hard for them to hear because they can't do anything about it.  So this is an internal battle I need to fight.  This is my mental war to fight, no one elses.  When it gets me down, I need to deal with it in my own head, not expect others to sympathise.  When I feel suicidal I need to work through that on my own, because I won't feel like that forever and its not okay to put that kind of stress on my friends and family.  The so called rule as well that if you tell a professional that you are suicidal and they have to do something is also bolox, as I told my therapist, my psychiatrist and my TRE practicioner and none had much of a reaction, much less did something about it.  They say you never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option you have, well that's too dam true.  One thing this journey has taught me is that I am dam strong for coming out the other end, being knocked down with dissapointments tons of times and I keep picking myself up and forging ahead, still running a successful business at the same time.  This post may not make much sense but I had the need to blot some thoughts down.  I can do this.  Even though I am petrified of what tonight holds, and realistically, it isn't going to be good, but I can do it.  I will wake up on the other side.  I will get through another day.  Just one day at a time.

The Rape Dream

So I wondered how long it would be until I had a rape dream...I have already had the horrific one of watching the little child get raped...well after a weekend away at a music festival with friends and having a great relaxing time I didn't think that that would be the night because I went to bed really happy.  It was so horrific I don't even feel I want to go into details now, I may come and edit the page at a later stage.  But wow, getting raped in some kind of 'classroom' environment with all sorts of people (some familiar, some not) watching has to be high up on the list of worst dreams.

C & M - how dare they torture my friends

Trapped...2 of my beautiful friends who mean everything and more to me we trapped in a township. The only way out was by climbing through an electric fence. When I hesitanted saying they should (I did so cos I've been electrocuted previous times in dreams) then my friends each got strapped into a toture device and I was forced to listen and watch.  The torment on their faces, I can't easily forget that. I don't know what else to say about this dream because it was soooo fucked up. And the horror to look at what they went through.  I just want to protect him now. 

How do they hurt them, and I do everything I can to protect her everyday and in my dream life I cannot do it now I feel let them down even when it isn't real.

The neurologist

I returned to the sleep doctor about a month and half ago, and when I told him that I was occasionally losing control of my bowels during these nightmares, he suggested I go and see a neurologist so I made an appointment to see one in one months time.  The night before I went to see him, I had a horrific night, one of my worst in ages so I was not even vaguely on function mode when I got to him.  I tried hard to give him the history of all the tests I'd had but I was so exhausted, physically from the night before and emotionally from how many times I had told this story before. He looked at my EEG and said whilst he saw an abnormality on one of the brain waves, it was not definately epileptic so he suggested an overnight 24 EEG with video monitoring.  I was very distressed about having this again as I found the 24 sleep study extremely traumatic.  I just decided to do what I had to do thought and booked the EEG for two days ahead. 

On the Friday I booked myself into the hospital and went to get wired up.  Whilst they were glueing the electrodes to my head I just cried and cried.  I had no idea why I was being such a baby but the tears would not stop coming.  Once I had all the wires on, which pulled horribly on my skin and itched like crazy, I just lay on my bed and starred into space for hours, wishing time away and wishing I could be anywhere but in that hospital.  I eventually went to sleep around midnight but at 5:30am I was woken by a tea lady who wanted to know what my order was for breakfast.  I was so angry, as I was in the middle of a nightmare when this moron of a woman came and woke me up that I was too mad to go back to sleep.  I then lost it.  I hid under my blanket and just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.  I knew what was going to happen now, all that would happen was that the doctor would call me in two days time and tell me I'm fine and there is nothing wrong with me.  And I would be back to square one and still living with this horror every single night.  And that is exactually what happened.  I got the call on the Tuesday and he said there was no evidence whatsoever of any abnormalities in my brain.  I remained calm when I got the phone call but when I went home all hell broke lose.  I just wept and threw things around my flat.  I opened my drawer with all my medication in it and stared at it for about 2 hours.  I wanted to die.  I had no desire whatsoever to continue to live like this any longer.  These suicidal thoughts continued to the next day and I realised that I had to options, re-admit myself to the clinic or get the hell away from Cape Town and my pills to keep myself out of danger of doing something stupid.  So I booked myself flights to Johannesburg. Something I really could I'll afford but I didn't feel like I had much option.  

Once I got to Joburg, I landed only to find out that 2 of my staff had resigned and a guest had taken it upon himself to shoot up heroin in our bathroom and pass out, leading my manager to walk in on him not knowing if he was alive or dead.  Things calmed down after that and I have now relaxed and am recovering a bit from everything that was last week, but I'm worried about next week and what will happen.  Whether I will come home, take one look at my bed and have my nightly breakdown or whether this trip will have rejuvenated me a bit.  Every test or treatment that I try feels like such a huge deal at the time and I keep making the mistake of allowing it to suck everything out of my physically, mentally and emotionally. When each test or treatment is actually such a small drop in the ocean of the bigger picture of everything that I have gone through. 

So where to from here?  I really don't know.  But I will just keep on taking it one step at a time as that's all that I know how to do.

Coming off the meds

I decided about three weeks ago that I would be stopping all my psychiatric medication as it was costing a fortune and not helping at all. I feel like I gave it enough time and belief and it was the right time to stop it. I tapered off the medicine slowly as advised by the sleep therapist (I did not receive a response to my email to my psychiatrist).  Whilst lowering the daily dosage I was fine, I didn't feel any side effects at all.  I was meant to wean for another week but on Friday I ended up sleeping at a friends house and didn't have my medicine with me so on Saturday I figured since I didn't take it the night before I may as well stop.  Sunday was okay but Monday...oh wow! I had the worst mood swings ever, I was literally raging like a bull. I had tingling feelings going up and down my body every couple of minutes, light headedness, dizzy, nauseous. The list goes on. I got into my car on Monday evening and just burst into tears. I wished I could be dead, I cried for death to come. I was sleeping at a friends house half an hour away and bawled my eyes out the whole way there. The symptom of withdrawl have eased very slightly but at least the mood swings have subsided.  The physical withdrawl is very intense though and I hope it begins to improve soon.

The police

Last night, my dream was ultra disturbing. I dreamed that there were policemen on motor bikes floating in the air and on the other side was a big propellor blowing really hard which was creating a suction force to keep them in the air. I was standing on the ground looking and was fascinated with how this worked. Then, all of a sudden the propellor went off. The policemens faces all fell, as they realised what awaited them. Then, in slow motion the fell to the ground, their faces distorting slowly and more gruesomely as they fell closer and closer to the ground. Then, slowly still, slam, they hit the ground and died slowly and painfully, one by one. 

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO FACE GOING TO SLEEP TONIGHT IF THIS IS MY REALITY!! HOW CAN I CONTEMPLATE GETTING INTO MY BED, WHICH I NOW VIEW AS A TORTURE CHAMBER BECAUSE THATS WHAT HAPPENS TO ME THERE!! I. Can't. Do. This. Anymore :(

The answer or more disappointment?

I had an appointment with an international sleep specialist this morning. He was shocked when he heard how much medication I was on and said if this was caused by depression I would have felt an improvement by now. When I told him about all the tests I've had and how I'm always shaking, he referred me to a neurologist and I have an appointment for mid March. He thinks I may have a strain of epilepsy. Is it crazy that I'm hoping I do?? So I can finally have answers and epilepsy is something with lots of doctors and medications available to treat it. At least I will know what I am dealing with then. I have also made the decision to stop all my medication (tapering off slowly of course). It's not helping so I don't see the point.

Random blotting of thoughts

So after 4 nights in a row of hectic nightmares I am simply too scared to go to sleep tonight. I've been running incredibly high anxiety all day and I had forgotten my anti-anxiety pills at home so I had to deal with that all day. Last night I dreamed that I was pinned down on the ground and poked repetitively with needles (I'm a huge needle phobic). It's 22:30 now and I really should get to bed so I can work a productive day tomorrow but I just cannot face what i know is coming. It's not even a maybe anymore, it's for sure now that I will have at least 2 nightmares....well 2 is a good night. This blog might not make much sense but it's just me blotting down my random thoughts because I feel like I need to get them out. I really wish that sleep wasn't something I needed every night. I wish that I could just decide for one day, okay, I've had a few bad nights so tonight I just won't sleep. But you can't go an entire night without sleeping. And then function a whole day. Man, I just don't know what to do. I did some hunting on eBay and Amazon today to see if they had any books on the parasomnias but the books were over R1000 and I don't know if they will even hold any value. I'm so desperate to sleep. Peacefully.  What can I do to make that happen. Just for one night. I just don't know.

Off with your head!

All my friends.  Slowly laying their heads over the side of the toilet bowls. One by one the guillotine falls and chops off their heads. I dare not look.  I am told the last one will be slow and painful and I have to watch. No option in the matter.

I woke up because I was moaning in my sleep and my travel mate shook me awake. Do I go sleep again and risk more of these nightmares? Or do I force myself awake. If I sleep again I know for sure I'll have another dream. But I'm exhausted :( I don't knows what to do.

Losing Hope

On waking from one of my dreams, I am too afraid to go back to sleep. This has been the pattern for the last 5 nights. Wake up anything between 5am and 7am from a horrible nightmare and then no matter how tired I am I cannot go back to sleep.  Since I am on this marketing trip I don't have the option like I do at home to be lazy or grumpy in my own bed, so I have to force myself up, awake and into the reception area of wherever I'm staying, then convince the tired receptionist to open the bar and give me a coke so I can try mad shock myself into conciousness.  My travel mate Kay-Leigh, our assistant manager, has taken the opportunity of this trip with both arms and is out in the day doing hiking trails and beach swims and at night is in the bar until the last person leaves, even though she doesn't drink. I on the other hand am tired and grumpy by 7.  Though sleeping is the last thing I want to do because of the dreams. I can't explain the internal dialogue I have both night and the next morning with myself about the fight between extreme exhaustion and fear of going to sleep. I wish I could be the big ball of energy that Kay is because that is how I used to be.  That was me.  Not anymore.  I'm seeing such amazing ideas on this trip that I would love to implement at my backpackers. But will I have the energy? My beautiful business deserves more than me. My staff deserve more than me. And I want to be that person I just don't know how anymore.

The Electric Fence

So here I am, on this beautiful holiday that I an on, looking out at the beach in front of me at 5:40am. Why? Because I had yet another horrific nightmare and woke up by screaming and I was in a 4 bed dorm.  So I thought it best I get out of there before I wake the rest of the room up any more. I dreamed I wanted to come home to my house but somehow it was entangled in wires and this group of ladies was not going to let me into my house because it was their tea break.  When i laughed and said but it's my house, they switched on and started running an electrical current through the wires and I got electrocuted. At this point I actually figured out I was dreaming but I couldn't wake myself up. I eventually muttered a little cry and that woke me up. It's 6am and I'm on holiday!! And I'm up and awake. Now I'm just sitting on the beach trying to clear my head.

The fire

Last nights dream I only remember vague parts of. Firstly I did not think that I would dream tonight as I had just arrived in Durban for a 2 week long marketing trip and whilst it is work it is a holiday as well.  I remember though that my backpackers was on fire and that we were trying to board up the doors with pizza boxes from the pizza shop downstairs but this couldn't seem to put out the fire. I woke myself up from crying.  I had a friend share a bed with me last night also and she said that I had bashed my head against the headboard in the night but I have no recollection of this.

The Torture Drip

After recently going for hypnosis and finding out some rather disturbing things about my childhood which I'd rather not discuss, I thought maybe my days of nightmares would finally come to an end. It was not to be. 2 days later I dreamed that I was in a big dark room with a whole lot of people lined up on chairs.  Each one of them had an IV drip put in. Each ones IV was filled with a certain type of torture method but they did not know what it was until the IVs kicked in. Once it did, some started shaking from electrocution, others had their nails pulled out of their fingers, others were raped.  This nightmare actually caused me to wet my bad and wake up. I have now come to a terribly difficult conclusion.  I have nightmare disorder and it's not going to go away.  So I should work on trying to accept it, rather than fight it so hard.  After homeopathy, an 8 grand poly sonogram sleep study, an EEG, an MRI of my brain, thyroid tests, 3 weeks in a psychiatric hospital, countless sessions with a councellor and 4 different anti-depressants, muscle relaxants, benzodiazepines, anti-psychotics and anti-anxiolytics, it still has not gone away. Time to stop fighting and time to accept. 

No where to turn

I have never felt so desperate in all my life.  On Boxing Day 2013 I started tremoring in my arm. It was so bad that I went to the emergency rooms, who ran a load of blood tests and then sent me for a brain MRI.  The results all came back normal. Is it crazy that in a way I almost hoped that they would find a tumour, or something, anything, that would explain these nightmares.  I have depression caused by the constant lack of sleep from these nightmares. My depression is never going to go away until these nightmares stop which is a very scarey thought to have.  Suicidal thoughts have even crossed my mind, but I honestly really DON'T want to die, I just want my life to change. I don't want to live a life in a cycle of depression, anxiety and nightmares.  I cannot explain to someone what it feels like to be gravely afraid of going to sleep at night, but at the same time being beyond exhausted.  My dreams are so vivid i feel as if all these dreams, I have seen these things in real life.  According to Wikipedia, the average adult has 2-3 nightmares a year.  That is a good night for me!!  I would do anything, pay anything, give anything to find the answer to this, and when I do (which I have to believe I will or I'll go insane) I will spread the word and help others.  I am tired of phoning my parents in tears saying I can't take it anymore, when I know that there is a nothing they can do about it.  When I read up on nightmare disorder, most material online says "relax" "yoga" "meditation".  I read this as "we can't help you".  I just want it to end now.  I want to go out there and live life to the absolute full, but that isn't going to happen whilst I am this tired, and on so much medication. 

What is Nightmare Disorder?

Taken from Wikipedia...

Nightmare disorder, also known as 'dream anxiety disorder', is a sleep disordercharacterized by frequent nightmares. The nightmares, which often portray the individual in a situation that jeopardizes their life or personal safety, usually occur during the second half of the sleeping process, called the REM stage. Though such nightmares occur within many people, those with nightmare disorder experience them with a greater frequency.

During the nightmare, the sleeper may groan and move slightly. The victim is often awakened by these threatening and frightening dreams and can often vividly remember their experience. Upon awakening, the sleeper is unusually alert and oriented within their surroundings, but may have an increased heart rate and symptoms of anxiety, like sweating. They may have trouble falling back to sleep for fear they will experience another nightmare.

A person experiencing nightmare disorder would have trouble going through everyday tasks; the anxiety and lack of sleep caused by the fearful dreams would hinder the individual from completing everyday jobs efficiently and correctly.