PAMELA FIGHTS IN PINK!: The Insomnia Experiment

As a scientist at heart I LOVE a good experiment. I don't think this one will have all the right controls in place but it will be interesting at the least. Chemo seems to disrupt all kinds of things and it really likes to disrupt my sleep! Some days after chemo I literally sleep ALL day and night and wish I was wearing a diaper so I wouldn't have to get up and use the bathroom! Then after the day time sleeping wears off I tend to have issues falling asleep no matter what. Sometimes I am productive while being wide awake but often I just want to go to sleep so I can wake up the next day!

Pumpkin is snoring in this picture....I'm wide awake!

However, I DO NOT LIKE MORNINGS. I never have and I don't think that is going to change. I'd prefer just to casually wake up around 9 or 10 AM.....no alarm. I don't like alarms either, they drive me nuts. Many of you reading this are shaking your heads in agreement right now because I know this is not just my preference!

Anyway, my husband likes to get started first thing in the morning......before the sun is out. Who would want to do this? But, we have a business to run and we get started early because our customers get started early so we have no choice. Normally I would get to the office around 8am and now I don't get there until after 10am......at the earliest! But I have cancer right now and I'm on chemo along with other meds, so my sleep is totally out of whack.

For example, last night I took 1 oxycodone to help with my leg and joint pains at about 10pm. I also took an Ativan at the same time to help relax me and hopefully get to bed before midnight. At 11pm I was reading in bed with no signs of being sleepy. So I took another Ativan and thought that by midnight I would be in la la land. Nope, I tried falling asleep then eventually got on my iPad and played some Candy Crush until I ran out of lives. I emailed myself a few times with things I needed to do the next day and I bought a few items on Groupon! The longer I am awake, the more I spend shopping, go figure. Now it's midnight and I am WIDE AWAKE and having a conversation with the hubby about falling asleep (who fell asleep earlier on the couch and just got in bed). He can fall asleep anywhere under any conditions. They guy will find an

Sleeping at the hospital, I'm wide awake on Benadryl & Ativan

uncomfortable spot to fall asleep while working on a ship at the port! This will happen if there is a work delay due to other contractors or weather, but it's still weird. I don't understand this type of behavior! Anyway, I took my heart rate while we were talking and it was at 106 bpm.....WHY?! I did not have caffeine or anything that would do this but I deal with it nightly. You can't fall asleep when your heart rate is jacked up like it just had a red bull and espresso! Some time after 2am I finally fell asleep and then didn't wake up until almost 11am when my phone rang from a annoying solicitor. This happened the night before but I was even more unsuccessful because I was up until 4am.

This is what I think of insomnia!!

The challenge will be for me to fall asleep earlier and get up earlier. Dave thinks I can break this late sleep/late morning cycle and so I'm going to try. I don't believe this will make me like mornings any more than I do now but it's worth a try. Starting tonight I am going to start the sleep process at 8pm. The goal is to be asleep by 10pm! I will probably have to do this with the help of some Ambien, so neighbors beware of random bald sleepwalker in the area! I'll give this experiment a week and see if it changes my sleep cycle. I'm convinced that mornings are not meant for me and that I am supposed to be nocturnal but we shall see.

Wish me luck and I will do an update later to let you know how this works out. Trying to put sleep on a schedule during chemo is quite the challenge in my opinion. Enjoy the pictures below of me awake while my dogs are asleep. They are NOT supposed to be in the bed so I hope the husband doesn't see this post!!