Question posted by j miller ( jamiller@vyvx.com) on 14:9:51 9/14/97
Question: For the last 4-1/2 months I have gotten very little sleep. When this first started, I would sleep approximately 3 hours, then I wasn't sleeping at all. I went to my dr who gave me ambien which helped me to sleep maybe 4 hours a night. When that prescription was almost empty, I asked for Restoril (sp?) The first night that I took that I didn't fall asleep so at 3 a.m. I took an ambien. I finally fell asleep around 7:00 a.m. and didn't wake up until 10:30 a.m. Obviously, I was late for work! When I do "sleep" it's like the first stage of sleeping. My mind will not clear and I just think of all kinds of things and then have "semi-dreams"; meaning that I feel like I'm awake and actually going through the motions but I never go into a deep, restful sleep. I changed jobs around the same time all of this started. I'm usually a heavy sleeper. (I don't ever hear very loud thunderstorms.) I also went to a counselor. She told me that I had symptoms of depression. I told her that I thought that it was just because I was soooo tired. About 2 weeks later when I went to see her again, I told her that if I wasn't depressed then, that I was now as my boyfried of 1 year had broken up with me just out of the blue. I was very, very upset about this because we got along so well, etc and it came as quite a surprise. Last week I called my dr's office to get a prescription filled and also let them know that I wasn't sleeping and taking both the Ambien and Restoril. They called me back shortly thereafter and told me not take both, to go three days without taking anything and then start taking the Restoril by itself. The first night I didin't sleep at all. The next night I was so tired that I took a Restoril but it didn't help. The next night I 150 mg of Trazedone which I was told would knock me right out. It didn't. I slept a good sleep for about 1 hour, woke up, then slept again from 2-4 a.m. I need help. I'm a 36 year single female parent. Until last December I've gone to school, taking 6-12 hours, worked full time, belonged to several organizations and attended all of my sons football, basketball and baseball games. So I've been able to handle stress and pressures for many years. I've only had problems sleeping one other time - a little over a year ago when my grandmother died but it wasn't as extreme as this and was a much shorter time period. I would appreciate any advice you can give regarding this problem...... Signing off..... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.....