I went to a neurologist yesterday. Last March, she had me sleep with a lot of sensors on my body. I normally can’t even fall asleep with a watch around my wrist, but as it happened, the three nights before I had slept so badly, that falling asleep wasn’t a problem that night even with the sensors. In fact, I do remember that night as a somewhat short but uninterrupted night of sleep.
This, however, must be because when you wake up just for a really tiny moment, you don’t commit this to memory. In fact, everyone does this a couple, like two or three times, each night. That night in question, I woke sixteen times.
A night with sleep, or at least some of it
In the picture above, yellow is awake, red is REM sleep, so dream sleep and purple is deep sleep. I always thought REM equaled deep sleep, but that’s just wrong. What’s also wrong is the way I sleep. The schema above is not (I hope) how you sleep. Normally, as I said, you’d wake two or three times for a very short time, not sixteen times. And you’d also not have your REM sleep interrupted.
My neurologist told me I’m just too alert. I had a sleep therapist, in December of 2023, who told me the same. I am so alert and busy during the day, my brain just can’t shut off at night. The reason this doesn't feel like I knew this one and half year ago and I've lost time is that now this diagnosis is backed by a neurologist. She send her findings to another therapist who works close to my home.
Of course, my constant alertness could be because I lead a busy life. A family with three kids, a demanding job and many hobbies, I do admit never winding down, unless you'd count running. On the other hand, my constant alertness could also be caused by the climate disaster that's quickly unfolding, the microplastics in everyone's brain, the decline of democracy wordwide, etc., but then again, you'd expect everyone to be in a constant state of panic, wouldn't you?
“Have hope”, my neurologist told me. “We can fix this”. I hope she’s right. I honestly don’t even remember what it’s like not to be tired, not to be terrified for time zone and daylight saving changes and prepare for them weeks in advance. I made a joke in an earlier post about a rule from what I called the Reluctant Insomniac’s Handbook, but the rule number came from an actual list of rules I have to live by to even have a chance of what feels like an uninterrupted night like the one above. I won’t bore you with the entire list, but I would love to tear it from my notebook and live like everyone else.
Let’s see what happens next.