written July 17, 2014
Sleep is still an elusive thing for me.
I’m not trying to say I’m not getting any sleep, I do get some, but most nights it’s a struggle to get to sleep. And then it’s an even bigger struggle to get back to sleep after I wake up. I always wake up usually 2 hours after I get in bed. Always to pee. Even though I’m in renal failure, what’s left of my kidneys are still making urine. At night, they seem to still make a lot of it.
Which is wonderful. I’m glad they haven’t failed completely, although it seems the only function they have left is removing fluid. They’re not longer filtering out waste products, they no longer maintain my blood pressure, they stopped making vitamin D and red blood cells long ago. I’m glad they’re still working, but it does bother me that night-time is when they make the most urine, which means I can’t get a good night’s sleep because I’m always having to wake up and go to the bathroom.
It’s the restless legs that get me. I’ve even been on a medication, ReQuip, to try and help with the restless legs. But it seems that the more often I take, the longer it takes to work. It no longer makes me sleepy like it did the first week I took it, and now it takes 2-3 hours before I really start to feel the effects. How annoying, that the one drug I’ve actually used that works is becoming less effective. Why is my body so sensitive to medications?
The worst are the nights when I wake up to use the bathroom and then I feel a headache settle in. Usually this is around 3 am. Surprisingly, the headache doesn’t prevent me from falling back to sleep (the restless leg syndrome does a good job of that). No, rather, if I fall back to sleep after a headache has started, the headache will just get worse by the time I wake up. Let me tell you how not fun that is.
All of this adds up to make me afraid to sleep. I’ve only been through this particular fear once before in my life. Probably nine years ago, I went through a period of insomnia where it would take me forever to fall asleep. This was in the summer of 2005 and I remember distinctly the fear of going to sleep at night.
Maybe fear isn’t the right word; more like trepidation. Going to sleep became such a chore, because I had to work at it. So for a few weeks, laying down to sleep was the last thing I wanted to do. Well, that feeling is back.
The idea of lying down to sleep at night does scare me, or at least worry me, because I hate the feeling of the restless legs, and I hate the way my brain won’t stop returning to things from the day over and over again.
That little issue could be solved by writing more, but the evenings are almost never a creative time for me. I love spending time with the kids, but they are real black holes when it comes to creative energy for me. Which I think is odd – our son is so creative and imaginative. You’d think I’d be inspired to be creative myself while being around him. No. I spend most of my time when I’m with him hoping he doesn’t fall and hurt himself, or stab himself with a pencil and hurt himself, or anything that could cause him to hurt himself. Clearly, not a conducive avenue for creative thought. Unless I’m thinking of creative ways that he might hurt himself that I have to look out for.
So night-time has become the worst time of the day again. Which totally sucks, because I like sleep. Sleep always helps to calm your mind and body. When you’re not getting enough of it, it really ruins your days. You feel tired, drained, lethargic. And the all day you just want to take a nap. Then if you can’t get a nap in, you approach the next night hoping that you’re tired enough to just crash for the whole night. Then the whole process with the restless legs starts and the uncomfortableness returns and you face most of the night knowing there still won’t be a lot of sleep.
Just another fun aspect of life on dialysis. Hopefully this won’t be an issue after the kidney transplant. It would really be horrible if this were my life going forward – never a good night’s sleep. I think that’s the thing I’m hoping for the most from the transplant, the ability to have a good night’s sleep again. And not just one good night’s sleep – most nights. Please let me get back to the old normal when it comes to sleep.