For the past six months now I’ve been experiencing a VERY wide range of sleeping issues and I am just at a loss what to do. I would seriously appreciate any insight in this matter. In late August of last year, I started experiencing constant fatigue. My sleeping was fine except that I kept getting up in the middle of the night, but didn’t worry about it because I’d go right back to sleep. The problem was that no matter how much sleep I got, I was still very tired throughout the day. This is when I first started noticing persistent yawning. By September I went back up to my dorm for college and my sleep problems got drastically worse. Some nights I found it very difficult to fall asleep, other nights I’d fall asleep fine but frequently wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes unable to go back to sleep. Even worse, because of this, to compensate for all this lost and unrestful sleep, I started taking two, sometimes three naps a day. I found that I got more rested sleep during my naps then I do at night. (I napped from anywhere between 1-2 hours). Then it didn’t take long before I started frequently getting sleep paralysis, which seemed to have only occur, or mostly occur, when I took naps. However, it wasn’t just sleep paralysis, it was almost always accompanished with some severe hallucinations, most of them making me feel like I’m being crushed, suffocated, and having difficulty breathing. I went to see a sleep specialist while I was at school and did some light therapy, maintained good exercise, diet, and a consistent sleep schedule while also completely abstaining from alcohol and caffeine, but this did nothing. If anything, I noticed that without caffeine consumption (I was a heavy tea drinker) that I was even more tired. My sleep specialist arranged for a PSG accompanied with a MLST but unfortunately my study wasn’t for another two months. Till that time my grades had suffered tremendously because of my lack of sleep and energy that I was forced to take the spring semester off to stay at home and devout my full attention to this problem. Since being home a couple of other symptons have surfaced. I’m noticing that generally, I don’t have much problems falling asleep at night initially, the problem is I constantly awake at different times during the night, and I never gradually awaken either, it’s always suddenly, and I feel so awake. Also I’ve noticed that I drink an excess amount of water at night when I do wake up (almost 30 oz.). I’ve also noticed an increase in headaches, which are very persistent either through the day or night, or both. In fact, they happen so frequently I gave up taking ibuprofens as I would take an exceeding amount everyday. Within the past week, I’ve noticed that my muscles are very sore, mostly my biceps (as if I had been lifting weights the day before), when I performed no such exercise, or even any exercise to warrant such pain. I figured it may have been from possibly sleeping in a bad position but the pain has been there for days and it was pretty excessive and I have been sleeping no differently that I usually do. Some nights I just toss and turn endlessly after waking up and can’t go back to sleep, but most of the time I just sleep, wake up, sleep and wake up almost throughout the whole night. Even on nights when I "seemed" to have somewhat slept (I have never slept through an entire night without waking up at least once in my entire life). Also keep in mind, I have eliminated napping altogether. I’ve had a friend of mine who is a nightowl, watch me sleep at night through skype for a few nights and he reported hearing me grind my teeth and hearing a sound that sounded like gasping but he couldn’t be a 100% sure. Right now, I am at a loss in terms of what to do next. I have completely abstained from caffeine and alcohol for the past three months, I run a mile every other day, take my vitamins and maintain a good and healthy diet, as well as make sure to sleep and wake up around the same time everyday and nothing is working in terms of making different lifestyle choices. I went to my doctor here at home and he sent me for the sleep study (PSG w/ MSLT). I’m actually here right now! I have finished the overnight sleep study but I fear that my sleep results will be wholly inaccurate and may cause a misdiagnosis. Last night, being hooked up to all these wires and such, I felt severe performance anxiety and felt pressured to sleep which prevented me from sleeping ENTIRELY. I think I only managed a half an hour to an hour’s worth of sleep at most and that’s only because I remembered having a short dream. The wires were very uncomfortable and my breathing piece kept falling out so I couldn’t sleep like I normally do because I kept moving them around. Now I feel like they are just going to instantly diagnosis me with insomnia and send me off on my merry way. But the way I slept last
night doing the overnight sleep study does not accurately predict how I normally sleep at night WHATSOEVER. I was just so nervous sleeping in a strange place and the wires were just SO UNCOMFORTABLE. I normally have no problems falling asleep initially and I don’t think half an hour to an hour’s worth of sleep data is enough for an accurate diagnosis. What should I do?
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