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.