The Sleep-Deprived Epiphany

Yes, dear Readers, an Epiphany. I was driving along this morning and on my way to work (there was a load of Arizona Iced Tea needing a good home and I was on a mission) when I suddenly felt an overwhelming burst of sudden knowledge pervade my being. It turns out my condition is not, I repeat, NOT, merely cluster headaches and a misaligned spine, but the result of years of disturbed and deprived sleep combined with several acute moments of blunt-force head trauma.

I gasped. I felt as though there was a great veil lifted.

I have been rather exasperated by the series of headaches I have been experiencing as of late. Please allow me to explain- Sometime back in or around 2008 I began suffering mind-bending headaches, but only after falling asleep. I would not suffer this during any waking hours and I noticed no hint the suffering would soon commence. But shortly after falling asleep (usually within two hours) I would be alarmed with a soul-shattering pain throughout my skull. I was eating pain relievers like a teen geek at a Star Trek movie (by the large handfuls for those not so gauche) to no avail. Eventually, I was eating these pills like this before falling asleep, but again, in a futile effort.

I quickly became uncomfortable and then eventually fearful of sleep.

Realizing this was a situation unable to stand, I went to the doctor. To illustrate, please understand I am not one to see the good doctor every time I get a sniffle or hangnail. No, if I can get the bone back in place myself and a Red Streamline Stapler will assist in stopping the blood flow, then the $20 copayment would be a monumental waste of funds. But I went to the doctor for this.

I explained my situation. “That’s right, doctor. It happens when I fall asleep and only then. But what’s worse is this situation is increasing in severity. It’s been about two weeks with no signs of anything but getting worse.”

He did a brief examination and then took hold of my tense shoulders. He then said, “To be honest, I think this is in your neck, not in your head.”

He wrote out two prescriptions and said, “Okay, I want you to take these. Don’t just take them when you feel like it, but do it as prescribed.”

People, these drugs were the shazam of the big, bad headache world. I mean, they stopped entirely. Well, not entirely.

A few months after experiencing headache free nights, the problem resumed. But my solution was simple in that I merely renewed the prescriptions and did what I had done before. Voila.

Yes, voila. The situation was resolved for years. But then fast forward to the present day, January of 2013.

A bit more than two weeks prior to the time of this writing, the headaches resumed. Now, at first they weren’t a major deal at all. I could beat them with a couple acetaminophen tablets and forget about it. During those first few days I found if I laid a certain way the headache would diminish on their own. Now, that’s awesome.

But it wasn’t to last. After a few more days, the old concerns of fearing the notion of lying down to sleep shivered me timbers. To go further, this was aggravated by the fact that I am now driving big truck again, and in a team truck with another. Just this past weekend saw a Friday morning miserable as all Hell while I tried to rest in order to work that night. I decided a visit to the doctor would be in order, and during the Saturday morning after driving through the night I cinched the decision in with a call. They could see me the next afternoon.

I attended this appointment yesterday, after a night of experiencing a full night of sleep sans the pain from Saturday to Sunday morning. No headache. No issues.

No bouncing, noisy Freightliner. There’s a point to that.

I explained to the good doctor what I had been going through recently and what I had endured some years ago.

Her diagnosis? Cluster headaches. For those not in the know, these are headaches that come and go in clusters of time, sometimes returning for a while before disappearing for an amount of time. She utilized a few words that got by me and then I was eventually confused to silence, but she had me covered. While I was relatively unsure of the origin of my pain, we now had two doctors with two different diagnoses. Now, the first one might have been wrong in his diagnosis, but not about the treatment. The medications prescribed (none of which were pain killers) did the truck wonderfully.

Our present doctor is approaching this differently. We’re going to seek the cause of the headache while treating the existing condition. There are two minor prescription pills (one known for high blood pressure but also known to assist with headaches) and another for issues like inflammation. A third prescription is for the pain when experiencing the headache at the moment it occurs.

I return in two weeks for a follow-up to see how we’re doing.

But I had an epiphany. If you recall, that is what this is all about. While driving in, I was still reeling from one of the irritable headaches from the night prior (only one night of relief from this demon, it seems) and then it occurred to me:

These things have been occurring during times of great unrest and when rest was difficult to obtain. Years ago, I endured the issue during my time working a third-shift position and when there were domestic crises afoot. Sleep was often something of a luxury at times, and I recall numerous moments when the lack of sleep along with being kept awake for often more than 24 hours was nearly as trying as the continual moments of being wakened when I was finally asleep.

Lately, the issues have been considerably different, but many of the problems parallel those days of old. Today, I have no set schedule in the truck; I drive when my partner is out of time and he does so when I am out of time. The truck is forever on the go up to twelve hundred miles daily, with a suspension system designed to clack your teeth together should a tire roll over a quarter. One must continually endure trying to sleep while the truck is at a constant 9.3 on the Richter scale, and this sleep could be demanded at five in the morning or five in the afternoon, or anywhere in between. There are stops, rushes ahead to stop fast, wide turns and the various endless maneuvers known in these big trucks.

Sleeping in these conditions is both an art and skill. One usually does so eventually, as exhaustion will take over at any time. But the problem is that once the exhaustion is dealt with via some sleep, one often wakes well before desired. Then there is the fact there must be some law preventing the bunk in these trunks to be comfortable whatsoever. I have been driving team with this good fellow since sometime in October, and for the most part I have grown accustomed to it.

But lately some of the days and nights have been so odd as we’ve often had to wait for a bit of time to resume from a specific stop. Any semblance of a predictable schedule was given up some time ago. It isn’t uncommon to fight the fatigue at a time when one wants to stop, and just as common to just lie there, ready to go, during the limited time available to recuperate. And then, wham.

Now, I understand the phenomenon of sleep to be a rather complex and mysterious process despite the common nature of the phenomenon. The body goes through some significant processes in order to sleep, and then the processes taking place during this time are equally significant. Not only does the body rest and consciousness subside, but this is actually an increased anabolic state.

I believe my body is reacting to a significant amount of sleep deprivation and disturbance. While I am trying to sleep when I can, environmental conditions and other factors are disturbing and therefore modifying the sleep process, causing errors in the system. While chemical, anabolic and other biological processes are in full swing, external forces are impinging on proper progression, leading to a malformed conclusion. The errors, now increasingly consistent yet changing in their methods, are taking hold.

The common transformational processes are being afflicted with anomalous occurrences so continually that the appropriate process is being replaced with an askew version. This is leading to stresses in the process, so rather than achieving rest, a condition of marked unrest is occurring. The symptoms resulting from this is severe stress combined with subconscious defense mechanisms not unlike common factors known with PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In short, I think my sleeping process has falsely determined it is under attack, or at least living in chaotic conditions, and as a result is responding with abrupt measures not much different from a high fever.

The one night I slept fine, just two nights ago, I was home and quite relaxed. I was in the kitchen and enjoyed a couple beers while watching a movie alone. Then, once I was quite tired and had to try to sleep despite my misgivings about enduring the expected headache, I got into a bed that was quite comfortable and not moving at all.

I slept almost continuously for nearly eight hours. I was up just once for the restroom.

My sleeping processes are assuming they’re under attack. That is the knowledge I have gained during this epiphany.

I should add some of the side effects of these drugs include dizziness, mania, euphoria and anxiety. Further, some of my common stresses combined with some of these drugs can significantly increase Cortisol, which can lead to even more stressful issues and body breakdown.

Hey, I’m just saying. I’m just fine to drive.