To sleep or not to sleep!

Bonjour,

In the last week I`ve once again been suffering from insomnia or those horrible nightmares and dreams.

I feel like my bed is a battlefield. I can`t recall the last time I had a good night`s sleep!

So what`s going on?

Well sleep dysfunction is a common problem for people with ME which includes

• Insomnia
• Difficulty in initiating sleep
• Frequent awakenings
• Nightmares or agitated dreams
• Non-restorative sleep
• Variations in sleepiness and energy throughout the day
• Sometimes hypersonic (excessive sleeping)

In the early stages of the illness hypersomnia is more the problem, when you need to sleep a lot longer than `normal` yet don`t feel refreshed. This may also happen in a relapse. Some find a reversal of their sleeping pattern and find themselves sleeping more in the day than the night. And then insomnia seems to become the pattern later in the illness. 

 It seems that the most common sleep dysfunction in M.E. is light sleep, where you never hit the deep stages of sleep (Stage 3 & 4) required for restorative sleep. This is because the endocrine system (which produces hormones) is dysfunctional in people with M.E. In a healthy person, the body naturally produces more dopamine and serotonin in the evening, as it gets darker. These two hormones are released in the brain, causing the normal progression of all of the stages of sleep, including deep sleep. Without enough of these hormones, the brain stays in the light stages of sleep.

So no wonder I always feel tired!

I have written a few poems about the problems of sleep in M.E. and I was approached by Julia Cottam to use these poems for The Big Sleep for ME during M.E. awareness week in May 2013 

She along with M.E. Awareness: Words and Pictures provided the artwork for the poems

I think the combination works well and helps to bring the poems alive.

Here are some examples.

This poem entitled Sleep highlights the problems around initiating sleep, frequent awakenings and insomnia.

 



The second poem ME Sleep patterns is about the changes that take place in sleep patterns from hypersomnia to insomnia, sleep reversal and unrefreshing sleep.

The third poem Nightmares and dreams is about the vivid and strange dreams that I and many others with M.E. suffer from. 

Sometimes I have one dream that goes on all night. I can wake up, go back to sleep and continue the same dream. It seems impossible to escape the dream. It`s like I`m living a different life in a parallel universe (I watch too much Star Trek!).

Sometimes I have one dream, wake up, go back to sleep and then have a different dream. It feels that my sleep is a never ending succession of short stories  - all as real and vivid as the next one.

Sometimes I can`t tell the difference from my dream and reality.

Sometimes the dreams turn into nightmares and I`m scared to go back to sleep.

These dreams and nightmares are exhausting.    

Here's another poem about Dreams

Sometimes we can become Paralysed in our sleep 

It's certain that we spend a lot of time in bed! 

With that I think I'll go to bed and hope not to dream! 

Bonne nuit 
From the French Femme xxx