It’s 3:23 AM and it’s been over a year since I saw someone about my sleep problems.
I figured since I named a whole section of my blog, Gen’s Insomnia Hours, I owed you an explanation of my sleep journey—or lack of it.
I noticed my sleeping problem in my junior year of high school, I was put on Lexapro because, well, life and it was the first time I noticed I was getting sleep. Sure, I had the not-so-occasional all-nighters and routine late nights, but I figured that was just the effects of being an overachieving AP student and not an actual problem. On Lexapro, I started sleeping at night, which was good at first, until I started oversleeping at any point of the day and I wouldn’t wake up unless someone—or something, like my dog—physically awoke me. I got off of Lexapro before college since I was joining ROTC and my over-sleepiness stopped. I thought I just had a bad reaction to the meds.
It wasn’t until 2020 that I noticed how bad my sleep was. I downloaded a sleeping app on my Apple watch after a lot of sleepless nights to track my sleep pattern. My God was it awful. The first few weeks that I saw my reports, I thought it was wrong. There was no way my sleep was actually that bad, so I decided to record myself sleeping, which was a humbling experience watching it back, and it was right. The app said I was waking up on average five times a night spanning from thirty seconds to thirty minutes and that I was only getting about four to five hours of interrupted sleep a night. Not to mention, it noted my wild sleeping habit. I always knew I was a wild sleeper. I’m prone to injuring myself in my sleep and waking up to bruises and sore limbs. Twice, I’ve slammed my head on a bed railing and have two permanent knots on the side of my head. I’ve chipped walls and kicked a lot, and my now-stepmom used to refuse to share a bed with me because of my sleep. I taught myself to lock my limbs as a kid, but I almost always woke up hurt.
So, I knew my sleep was intense, but I didn’t know how bad it was until I downloaded the sleep analysis app. It told me I wasn’t getting REM sleep (I used to average 5-10% max when I was supposed to get 25% on average), which explained to some degree why I move in my sleep and don’t dream often. The REM stage is where the body repairs itself and starts dreaming, so the paralyzes it so the body doesn’t do the actions it does in dreams, like running. But since I hardly REM sleep and am often interrupted if I do, I don’t dream often, and my body doesn’t paralyze properly. I apparently talk in my sleep and spend most of my night drifting between light and deep sleep.
In the Fall of 2021, I said enough is enough and saw a sleep doctor (which I didn’t think was a thing outside of Stephen King). I had to drive down to Dallas on Halloween weekend and spent the night in a lab, so they monitor my sleep. Due to my intense sleeping movements, it was safer for me to be monitored so that if I did tangle myself in the vast number of cords, someone could come to get me. It was, naturally, one of the best sleep sessions I had gotten in a long time. I only woke up once and I only kicked off my leg electrodes. I didn’t get on my phone, and I felt well-rested.
I remember telling my doctor that before we went over the results, and he gave me a mixture of a smile and a grimace. Apparently, my sleep hadn’t been that great. In fact, he said it was concerning. He told me I had insomnia, which I then learned was not just having a problem falling asleep, but also staying asleep. I woke up six times over a four-hour period because I apparently have UARS (upper airway resistance syndrome). This is when my tongue falls back in my mouth and blocks off my airways, not completely to cause an apnea, but enough to startle me awake. This consistently happened before or during the REM cycle and once the REM cycle is interrupted, the body has to start the entire sleep over again.
So, I learned why I don’t sleep at night. So, how did I fix it? Well, I didn’t. The suggested sleep remedies were a CPAP machine, which I was advised against due to my sleeping patterns, or an oral device that would move my jaw and help my tongue not fall back. The problem was not medical, as I was all set to go to a sleep orthodontist, but an insurance issue. My old insurance ended, and my new insurance wouldn’t cover it. I couldn’t afford a $2000-$3000 device when I was paying for living and college, so I never got one. I just suffer through the night as sleep gets worse.
But, hey, at least I got a cool segment out of it.