A Serious Case of Insomnia

When my grandfather died last June, I had 12 days off in a row because I was able to avail of bereavement leave in combination with my regular days off. That threw off my sleeping patterns which continued through my visit to the Philippines in September when my mother died, and several weeks afterwards until early November. That insomnia would be understandable because of the emotional upheaval the death of loved ones caused.

Then all of a sudden, my body seemed to have rebooted itself and I started sleeping well again during the day when I worked nights, and during the night on my nights off. About three weeks ago everything suddenly changed again even though there were no significant events that would have caused the renewed insomnia. I’ve had a hard time sleeping at night no matter how I try to maintain a proper sleep/wake pattern. When I would normally fall asleep at about 11:30 p.m., I have not been able to do so lately until 3 or 4 a.m. And even though I wake up as usual at 7 a.m. in hopes that I would fall asleep at my usual time the next night, it hasn’t worked. One night I tried taking a Benadryl based sleep aid and it didn’t help. It just made me feel jittery, which was one of the possible side effects. Drinking wine didn’t even give me a couple of hours of sleep, just a few minutes of drifting off and more hours of wakefulness. That has left my brain foggy at times and never 100% when I’m supposed to be enjoying my days off from work. Taking a low dose of a benzodiazepine made my mind relax but didn’t help put me to sleep.

If there was one positive thing I can say about this, it is that I am able to stay awake and mostly alert at work in the middle of the night while some of my coworkers whose names I won’t mention, are dozing or drifting off. One consequence of staying awake is the extra eating, and of course that’s not good if you are on a restricted diet. Instead of being asleep for 7 or 8 hours, hunger pangs arise in the wee hours of the morning.

                So at the moment, whatever advice is out there about promoting proper sleep, I probably tried already and nothing has worked. I am not inclined to ask my doctor for a sleeping pill because those sometimes have a side effect of sleepwalking. There have been cases where some people have even driven to places and done things that they were not aware of. So all I can do is hang in there and hope that my body reboots itself again sooner than later. Unfortunately I don’t have a Ctrl-Alt-Del button on my body so I can do it as needed.

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