iNsOmNiA SUCKS!!!

Yeah. I did that funky title on purpose with the lower and upper case letters. I wanted to draw your attention to the word INSOMNIA, did it work? And you may be wondering how I can be coherent enough to even blog today but that's the thing...my brain never stops working. That's partially the reason why I can't sleep. I can't figure out how to turn off the thoughts.

There's nothing like tossing and turning all night long trying to get comfortable enough to drift off to dreamland. It's challenging to even climb into bed when you know you won't find relief. This morning, my husband could tell it'd been a rough night for me. When he left for work, he could see me huddled at the foot of the bed with all my pillows trying to find a position conducive to sleep. I'm sure he wondered what in the world I was doing at the foot of the bed but I was trying to find something that worked.

Part of the insomnia is the result of coming off of Ambien cold turkey. My oncologist had prescribed it for me a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned I couldn't sleep. After researching the drug, I worried about being on a medication I could get addicted to or dependent on and decided I didn't want to risk it. I decided night before last not to take it any longer...OH MY GOSH! I don't know if it was a huge mistake or what but I'm back to sleepless nights. Not to worry though, I'm going to contact him today and ask his opinion. He'll probably tell me I'm a dummy for coming off it cold turkey and I'll take that slap on the wrist because I earned it.

So what do you do? Do you take the medication and get some really good, hypnotic sleep and risk becoming dependent on Ambien or do you keep on hoping and praying for sleep to come? I don't know. I don't know what the best thing to do is but I know I have to get some sleep or I'm not going to be able to function. This is not pretty. Something has to give. And you may be thinking why don't you just take the medication and go to sleep? It's not that easy. We just added Cymbalta to my ever growing list of meds 2 weeks ago and I'm getting tired of checking for drug interactions every time a new med is added to the list, but...as a responsible adult, I have to be careful about my body and my health. I need to know if I'm facing some life or death side effects because I can't trust the medical team to shoulder that responsibility for me.

Please pray I make the right decision and pray I can get some sleep. If you get a peaceful, restful night's sleep every night, I envy you. Please don't take it for granted because some of us don't remember what that feels like.