Scary Stories

I am not quite sure why, although I have a general theory, but I find that the more I watch, read, or listen to scary stories, the fewer nightmares I seem to experience.

For whatever reason, whether I just simply have a twisted mind, some latent aggression, or if it stems from long-term use of certain medications (*cough*Prednisone*cough*), I tend to have nightmares and even night terrors on a regular basis. I have lucid nightmares, I have sleep paralysis (which always occurs as a nightmarish experience) and have been known to have both auditory and visual hallucinations. 
Though when I have been watching horror films, they seem to stop. Or at least my nightmares are more normal - like spiders or bees or falling or something more run-of-the-mill.

My theory is that, unless my mind has something frightening on the external to focus on, up bubbles these demonic horrifying visions from within my own psyche. If I do not have an outlet, my mind comes up with its own versions of absolutely horrifying scenarios. Scenarios I have never heard of - scenarios I could not consciously think of.
Trust me - compared to what my inner mind seems to bring up, I will gladly take nightmares of being attacked by gigantic spiders or surrounded by angry bees or ravenous wolves. Those do not scare me. Much.

So, after a particularly soul-shattering nightmare last week, I began falling asleep while listening to a podcast: Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. These stories have all been really cool to listen to, and oddly comforting.
They are stories.
I know they are stories.
My mind knows they are stories. So they become an external outlet. I have not had a nightmare since. Not even a regular one!
I hope it is effective in keeping my nightmares/night terrors away.
Otherwise I would have many more nights of being legitimately frightened to fall asleep.

How strange is that? I wonder sometimes if it is fairly common for people to feel in actual spiritual, even mortal, danger if they fall asleep.

Dreams and Nightmares

I wonder about the dreams and nightmares of anyone who is ill, scarred, disabled.

Do you dream about yourself in your current situation?

Do you dream about yourself as healthy?

If you are in a wheelchair, do you dream of yourself as in a wheelchair, or do you dream about walking?

If you were healthy and became ill, do you dream about when you were healthy? Or do your flashbacks reflect your more ill self?

These are genuine questions I wonder about.
Some of my dreams and nightmares are insane. Creative, unpredictable, nothing I could ever consciously think of. However, if I am in the dream or nightmare, I am myself as I am right now. My husband in my dreams is always my real husband. Unless I am having flashbacks about me as a child (in which case I dream of the real houses I used to live in), the house I dream of is the house we currently live in. The dogs around me are the dogs we are raising.
Of course, the husband in my nightmares is often a jerk, but I think that is a fairly normal kind of nightmare. I try not to be irrationally angry with him for what he does in my dreams, but it sometimes takes me a few minutes to cool down.

For anyone who is drastically ill, who has suffered trauma, do you dream of yourself as you are?

Another Partially Sleepless Night

Here I am, lying in bed, essentially staring at the ceiling.

I fell asleep with little to no issue, but woke up just before 3am. This often happens - though it is normally around 4am.
In all likelihood it is because certain medications that cause drowsiness wear off between 4-6 hours after taking them, and we tend to go to bed around 11pm.
So it is logical.

But then I can't always get back to sleep.

Sometimes I will make my way downstairs to do some yoga and meditation, or work on some art projects. Sometimes I will go and watch a movie or something to keep my mind from wandering. Sometimes I will go in the guest bedroom to see if sleep will envelop me in a different bed.
The options are all the same though.
They don't really address the issue.

It's pain. It's restlessness. It's warn off medications and bouts of insomnia. It's nightmares and the odd night terror. It's sleep apnea, sleep paralysis, and hallucinations. It's overheating and overthinking. It's an overactive mind combined with an overactive body. It's that in-between state where I am absolutely exhausted and fatigued but not necessarily sleepy. It's being sleepy but body restless. It is all about being exhausted all of the time, sleeping away most of my days, and yet never feeling rested. It is elusive restful sleeps. Today in particular it's reeling after a really awful nightmare - plus overheating and restlessness.

And the snoring to my right just amplifies my inability to sleep.
With that said, I am very grateful that my common insomnia does not seem to have a negative effect on his sleep. If that were the case I'm sure I would be sleeping in the guest room a lot more often.

So what do you do when you can't sleep but can't quite function either?

If I get up and begin something - a yoga session, reading, painting, writing - I am admitting defeat. When I do these things, I usually wind up staying awake for several hours instead of one or two. Getting up and doing something productive, while it feels good psychologically, it essentially worsens the problem.
So I write blogs. I stare at the ceiling. I try to meditate. I do nothing - so that I may be able to fall back asleep.

Lucky for me, I am not often forced to awaken early. Unless I have an appointment, there is no reason for me to really stress about trying to function on a significant lack of sleep. I've done that before. It doesn't turn out very well.

So even though I am frustrated with my body's avoidance of a restful sleep, I am also not often required to stress about it. It's just a matter of deciding whether or not I am going to physically get up and stay up for another 4 hours or so, or if I am going to try and get back to sleep within the hour.

We'll see what prevails: Exhaustion vs Restlessness.

Bad Dreams

Last night I had this super vivid and horrible dream.
I dreamt that Rj had bought a package of little tapioca pearls for me to add to my rice pudding... or so he thought. Then, after dessert we decided to go to a movie, but 30 minutes into the movie I started to feel awful. Suddenly I kind of gurgled up a bunch of the tapioca pearls. I could feel each one of them as they came back up my throat and gurgling out.
Pth pth pth pth pth pth.
We left the theater and (as the low-impact vomiting continued) Rj did a quick search on his phone. Turns out the tapioca pearls he bought were actually a deadly substance that can kill its victims within an hour. We race to the car - vomiting becoming worse - only to find out we had locked our keys in the car.
Pth pth pth pth gurgle pth pth
As Rj called an ambulance, the pearls were coming out in waves and were getting more and more red and with more sludge than just the pearls. Blood. Lots of blood. By the time an ambulance showed up, blood was just flooding out of my mouth, but I could still feel all the little pearls.

Such a weird nightmare.

I woke up drenched in sweat and had a super sore throat.. but I also woke up with"

A POOL of DROOL all over my face, arm, pillow and sheets. Apparently I was gurgle drooling. Like Jabba the Hut. Or Homer Simpson.
Luckily, Rj didn't notice or wake up, so I was able to clean myself up and let things dry before he awoke.

Bad dreams are pretty common if I have any cortisone in my system... and we had also done a lot of cleanig during the day so I (evidently) was kind of zombie'd out. Still strange... but funny!

Dare to Dream

I had very strange dreams last night. Crazy dreams. One was kinda good, one was weird and bad but not anywhere near night terror kind of bad.

◇The good one was about football.
Not NFL though.
Recreational League.
Apparently I decided to join a league, on a team with several of the people I used to play league volleyball with, and we played in a massive year-end weekend tournament. The dream mostly took place at the wind-up banquet. My original position was wide receiver (just like my Dad in real life), and I was pretty damn good. I wound up getting 4th overall in the league for that position (out of men and women). Then, some key players didn't show up, so I had to fill in on defense as well. I got 6th overall as a defensive tackle. (This was a very specific dream). I received some cash, a prize, and then some extra raffle tickets to put in as many of the 10 raffle prize boxes I liked.
I never did get that far in the dream.
I was handed my prize and envelope for 6th overall, smiled, went back to my table, and woke up!◇

Sometimes vivid dreams become intense and frightening, especially after taking a certain medication. This one, however, turned out to be just plain fun.

I had a fairly awful sleep overnight. I was up multiple times for the washroom - my intestines are downright ticked off, despite the fact that I stuck to Boost, rice, and apple sauce all day - and I got paranoid a few times. Medication oops.
Then this morning, as my alarm went off to take my medication, I was reluctant to move. I had FINALLY found a comfortable position, and I knew that if I just simply turned off my alarm and closed my eyes, I would be back asleep immediately.
I cannot miss my medications though, otherwise my entire day is messed up.
Just as I was about to say 'screw it' and fall blissfully back into an actually solid slumber, my intestines woke up.
They woke up brutally.
One intense intestinal cramp followed by me springing out of bed and hobbling like lightning to the washroom in order to avoid a reeeeeally bad morning definitely had me far too awake to fall back asleep.

My days are usually so uneventful!! Why do my nights have to be so busy?
At least I had some good dreams sprinkled in with my usual nightmares.

The question now is, do I try and sleep for a couple more hours, or accept defeat and force myself to get up and get moving?

Familiar Nightmares

Do you ever have one of those nights where you experience a familiar nightmare?

I just woke up from one.
Not only have I had this nightmare before, but when I am in it, it feels as though I have BEEN there before. As if it was an alternate universe. Even in the dream it feels as though it is happening right this moment AND that I am in control of myself during it. It is in real time - in this house, this exact night, with both Dex and RJ here. In it I am even wearing the exact same pajamas as I am right now. It also always includes information about the previous owners. And even in the dream I always remind myself that if it were real and actually occurring, that Dex would have gone berserk and alerted me to it. Even in the dream I realize it is not real.

Not only that, but whenever I have this particular Familiar Nightmare, once I wake up, not much time has actually passed. At all.
Normally when I have nightmares that linger, especially ones that freak me out to the point of wanting to turn on every single light, it is a couple of hours before my medication alarm. This one, however, is commonly only 2-3 hours after we have gone to sleep.

How something so strange can feel so familiar is mind-boggling.

It also doesn't help when I wake up to RJ sleep talking. That always creeps me out... until I find it funny.
Right now it is not funny yet.

My one saving grace in it is that I only visit Familiar Nightmare when I have a very specific medication. I do not have to take it on a regular basis, but each time I do, that is where my mind travels to.

P.S. It also does NOT help when I get up to have some Boost to settle my stomach, and accidentally gulp down a few sips of the STRAWBERRY kind. (We bought a variety pack just to see if I enjoyed Vanilla or Strawberry.. tastes can change right?)
Nope nope nope nope nope. Disgusting.

Next Level Paranoia

I don't even know quite how to explain this one.

Well, let's start with how I have been feeling. Yesterday was bad. Really bad. We had a busy and eventful Family Day Weekend, so yesterday was bound to be bad. My head felt like it was in a vice all day and didn't settle down until about 1am. I had pain in my chest, pain in all of my joints, in most of my muscles, exhaustion, pain in my GI tract, and spent the day wanting to vomit and having no real appetite (but eating anyways). That's all pretty normal for me after a busy day or two. But then there were a few other things. When I was doing my stretches or just putting my head between my legs to help my nausea, it felt like water was filling up my nasal cavity - like when you dive into water and it shoots up your nose. Your head fills with pressure and it hurts like hell. But this is every single time I even look down for more than a few seconds.
I figure I just caught a cold or something.
Then going to bed I felt completely feverish (which is rare for me). Some chest pain, horrible sweating fit, feeling hot and clammy all over, and the nausea. The intense nausea.

Alright, so whatever right? I mean, a couple extra random annoyances, from a couple extra busy days. It is just my body trying to fight something (trying to fight itself, really). Plus I did my Berinert injection yesterday and could barely muster up the strength to get out of bed and get to the couch!

But then my mind went nuts - while I was sleeping!! Now I want to preface this by mentioning that I did not do any searches online for any symptoms, I do NOT think my dream is correct, and I am NOT condoning going this far in 'listening to my body'. This is just too weird and random.

I had a dream. More of a nightmare. Most of it doesn't even make sense.
*In my dream, I apparently had some sort of heart monitor. There was a little bar code on a little label on my chest that I was supposed to get looked at every 5 years, but it had been longer than that. I also had a friend who had the SAME monitor, and she called me because she lost her label and asked if I knew her bar code. Somehow I did, and then that reminded me to book an appt to check mine out. So me, Mom, Dad, Ryan, and Dex all went in to the hospital to check it out. The doc took a look at the monitor and noticed that twice a month, I was experiencing "Pleural Effusions", and that we had to keep a closer eye on me for a while. Then Dex ran away and got lost and I woke up in tears.*

Completely random. Frankly I did not even know that I knew there was something called a pleural effusion. When I woke up, I went to Google what it was and spelled it "plural" at first. Of course it has nothing really to do with the heart and I obviously did not have a good understanding of what it was, I likely just heard the term on one of the MANY medical shows that I watch, but I did happen to find out that it can be a side effect of Cosentyx.

Just interesting.

Again let me reiterate that I do not think I have it and this is beyond strange, but it does give me a push to mention my weirder symptoms to my doctor if they persist. I DO have an appointment with my rheumatologist in a couple of weeks to talk about the Cosentyx progress, so it might be a good place to mention any odd symptoms - but only if they continue and are not just my body recuperating from a busy weekend...

Anyways - there is my story of total next level paranoia -> dreaming about pleural effusions and heart monitors while I am not actively thinking about anything medical.