{"id":420991,"date":"2010-03-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-12T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.usa.gov\/roller\/govgab\/entry\/sleep_disorders_my_life_as"},"modified":"2010-03-12T08:04:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-12T13:04:49","slug":"sleep-disorders-my-life-as-a-zombie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/420991","title":{"rendered":"Sleep Disorders: My Life as a Zombie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PictureThe other night, I was awake the whole night. I haven’t had a night like that in a long time, but it reminded me of my past issues with insomnia<\/a>. I was pretty young when it dawned on me that I didn’t have the same sleeping patterns as my sisters. I had frequent episodes of getting very little, or no, sleep 3-4 times a week. While my sisters were sleeping, I was awake for hours thinking, thinking, thinking. I would think about happy things, things that worried me, or sometimes I would ponder world problems.<\/p>\n

One night I didn’t want to eat my stew. My mom told me that children were starving in Africa and they would love to have that stew. I stayed awake the whole night thinking about it. I was only 8, but it seemed impossible to me that anyone would want to eat my mom’s stew… no offense Mom! I spent the rest of the night plotting how I could send those kids my stew. Around 3:30 am, I came up with the idea of borrowing my dad’s thermos on Friday night and, when my parents weren’t looking, filling it with the stew. I could take it to the post office on Saturday to mail it
\nto those hungry, African kids. As long as they got the thermos back to me by Sunday night, my parents would never know. Around 4:30 am, I figured out I could probably ship them my mom’s liver, spinach, and beets too!<\/p>\n

My parents would take us to drive-in movies. While my sisters were zonked out after the first movie, I secretly watched the rest of the movies with my folks. One movie had zombies in it. The zombies roamed around at night and they didn’t sleep. Hey, that was my problem! Oh no, I was becoming a zombie! Of course, zombies also had sharp teeth and ate people, but I figured it was just a matter of time before I started snacking on arms and legs. For a while, I spent sleepless nights not only pondering those hungry, African children, but feeling my teeth to see if they were
\nbecoming pointy. Despite the fact that I outgrew my zombie fears, to this day, I still have this mental association with sleep disorders and being a zombie.<\/p>\n

These sleepless episodes followed me into adulthood. At some point I understood that I was experiencing insomnia. I read up on insomnia and tried various things to help myself. Nothing really seemed to help. I signed up for a relaxation class and was surprised to discover that it helped me a little, but the truth is that the \u201creal cure\u201d for my insomnia was… to develop severe sleep apnea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yeah, isn’t that a kicker? I no longer had trouble falling asleep, but while I was sleeping, I would stop breathing 100s of times a night. In order to keep living, I had to wake myself up to breathe. Oddly, I didn’t even know that this was happening to me. It took me years to get a sleep apnea diagnosis, but eventually I got help. <\/p>\n

Sleep disorders<\/a> impact a person’s life in many ways and they are quite dangerous to have. If you suspect that you or a loved one may have a sleep disorder, you may want to check out these additional resources:<\/p>\n