Sleeping

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My sleep has gotten so bad it's having a major impact on my life. I have no control over when I sleep and I've been sleeping during the day and staying up all night, but it's a t different times every day. I've also been sleeping 10 to 12 hours at a time.

The only way I can try to adjust my sleep schedule is by staying awake longer, because trying to fall asleep earlier is impossible, but lately I've been so tired that I've been unable to push myself to stay awake, or when I do it just makes my sleep schedule even more unpredictable. It's become a very serious problem.

Has anyone ever been to a sleep specialist and found it even remotely helpful? In my experience they only treat sleep apnea which is not a sleep disorder, it's a breathing disorder that happens while you sleep and has nothing to do with actual sleep problems.

I've been rather underslept recently because of an operation I've had after which they told me I had to sleep on my back, not on my side, for several weeks. I've never been able to sleep on my back, hence the insomnia. Not surprisingly I felt like crap until I finally got so tired I was able to learn to sleep on my back. I'm better slept now, and I'm allowed to sleep on my side again, though it was rather painful to do so at first. Unfortunately I've been waking up at 7am every morning, unable to go back to sleep, and I just can't seem to get to bed early enough to really catch up, though I'm nothing like as badly sleep-deprived as I was.

I think part of the reason I'm sleeping so poorly is that although I like sleeping, I like my waking life even more, so I'm like a child - never wants to go to bed, and always bouncing about first thing in the morning. All of which seems rather unusual at my age.

Today fell asleep in the locker room at work half hour before my shift started. It was great. Usually exhausted before work but almost never able to sleep because of loud and rude coworkers.

If I'm comfortable, I have little trouble falling to sleep these days.

There was a period of about ten years when I slept about two hours per night. It didn't take long to fall asleep, but I woke up pretty much instantly. The worst part of that was that I only had dreams about twice a year during that period and I really missed that. This was from about 1994 to 2004.

These days, I sleep about 8 to 10 hours per night. Even though I am not retired, I don't live by the clock and so it is very rare for me to have any specific time to get up.

The problem now is that I'm not at all comfortable until I have warmed up a bit. My thyroid quit about ten years ago and I'm on thyroxine hormones now. The first sign when it quit was that I couldn't warm up. I still can't warm up. One November night a few years ago, I was out doing some work and came back to the office to get a better coat and took the opportunity to check my temperature. It took several minutes for my body temperature to come up enough for my thermometer to register. Once it finally did register, it was 90.1 F.

My bedroom is not very warm. Even though I sleep under a sheet, a blanket, and two comforters -- the top comforter is a very heavy duty Eddie Bauer goose down comforter -- it can take me an hour or two to get warm enough to go to sleep. Even then, I am still cold, just not as cold. Last night, I stuck an electric blanket between the sheet and the first comforter. I fell asleep much quicker with that turned on to warm me up.