Last night I fell into bed exhausted. I knew I was in trouble when I had laid there for a half an hour wide awake. One of the things that a friend taught me and I have put into practice is to just lie there, even if I can’t sleep. My body is still getting rest. So I laid there. Then it happened. I had just drifted off to sleep and it started. The tingling sensation that starts somewhere in the core of my chest and runs out to my finger tips in waves followed by my heart beating so hard I think it is going to pop out of my chest. It used to scare me. For lack of a better description is feels like the fight or flight feeling you get when you see something bad happen, like one of you children run out in front of a an oncoming car. The Dr’s first treated it as anxiety. They loaded me with all sorts of depression and anti anxiety medications. None of them worked. The psychiatrist was the first specialist to tell me that he had no idea what was going on and no explanation as to why I was not responding to the medications.
When the first wave hit last night, at first I was upset. I started down the path of the GRRRRs, why is it back. What triggered this symptom again? Then I reasoned that this train of thought is not going to make it any better. I cannot answer the question, so I imagined I was on a surf board riding a giant wave. Now this symptom has a name. The Big Kahuna. For the next 3 hours every time I would drift off to sleep my body would wake me up and I would get to ride a big Kahuna. Then while I was waiting to fall back asleep I thought of all the witty ways I could blog about it.
One of the drawbacks to the Big Kahunas is they are like power naps. They wake me up and my body thinks it has slept. I wake up from Big Kahunas totally rested. It takes a ton of will power to just lay there and wait to fall asleep again
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