In the first post I wrote about the beginning of my health nightmare, I had just started vacation in Scandinavia. We spent a fun day in Copenhagen eating and drinking, taking a boat tour and wandering around the city. I took a short nap while we were on the boat and struggled to stay awake taking the train back with our friends to their home in a nearby city in Sweden. At their home, we had dinner, drank some wine and caught up and then it was time for bed. I lay awake for hours, but I didn’t think too much of it, since jet lag is a very real thing for me. I just figured I’d eventually fall asleep and would adjust over the next couple of nights. I did fall asleep eventually, only to be awakened by my husband, telling me I needed to get up and get ready for an overnight trip we were all taking to Denmark. I was really tired, but had some green tea and figured I’d wake up more as the morning went on.
We visited the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek (highly recommend), nearby Frederiksborg Castle and the Viking Ship Museum In Roskilde. We arrived at a small inn on the sea for the night, enjoyed a short walk and a lovely dinner, and I was eager to go to bed. However, it was another bad night. The room was really hot, which for me is not conducive to good sleep. So, I tossed and turned all night, sleeping some but not as much as I had hoped.
We got up in the morning to do some more sightseeing, including Kronborg Castle, made famous by Shakespeare in his play, Hamlet. It was another great day, followed by a nice evening in Lund, where our friends live, and once again, I figured I’d finally catch up on some sleep. I was tired! But again, I had a disappointing night, and was incredibly tired the next morning, as I had not slept a full night since we arrived in Europe. I started to worry about sleep, and made sure I was not napping during the day, got up in the morning instead of sleeping in, and other things you are supposed to do to get over jet lag.
We took a train to Stockholm, a lovely city, and arrived at our AirBnb apartment. I found the place a little grungy, the bed was an odd pullout couch, and it was noisy outside. I slept really poorly the several nights we were there, often falling asleep around 4 a.m., only to get up around 8 so we could go explore the city. At this point, I’d developed anxiety about the insomnia. With a few exceptional times in my life, I generally sleep well, so this development concerned me. I could feel my body getting close to sleep, only to suddenly wake up. I spent hours awake, reading, and I couldn’t seem to keep still. My body felt as if someone had turned on a switch. I felt almost like I was vibrating or as if adrenaline was coursing through my body. I actually emailed my naturopath and asked for advice on supplements I might try. I found some valerian and a couple other things and while they helped me relax, I was still awake for hours each night.
I also started having an odd symptom of profuse saliva. It would be bad enough that I would need to seek out a restroom and throw it up. The lack of sleep left me feeling hazy and as if somehow there was a hole in my head that air was blowing through. I realize that sounds strange, but I am not sure how else to describe it. My head just felt breezy and cold, while my body felt zingy and electric. Not a winning combination. Despite all of this, I maintained a good mood and really enjoyed exploring Stockholm. I kept hope that my body would eventually settle back into it’s usual rhythm in Norway, where we would be far from cities much of the time.
This turned out to be somewhat true. In the beautiful Lofoten Islands, it was quiet and there were few people around. I didn’t sleep great, but a little better than I had been. I just kept thinking that my body would just at some point need to catch up. But a good night’s rest continued to be elusive. Oddly, I slept better on the next phase of our trip, which was a couple of nights on a medium size cruise shop going along the Norwegian Sea from Bodo to Bergen. We had met up with our friends again in Bodo, and before the cruise, we shared a bunk room at a nice, clean hostel. We were talking in the dark and I conked out right away. We had to get up at 4 a.m. to board the ship, and then I went right to sleep again for another four hours. I was so excited about that! It made it easier to enjoy the day of crazy wind, rain, sun, good views and being socked in, and that night, when I big storm rolled in, I was able to fall asleep while the ship lurched and heaved in the high waves. Those nights in Norway were as good as it got for the rest of the trip. I am sure my anxiety about the insomnia didn’t help, but it also felt like a really physical thing, not a psychological one. My body just seemed to have a hard time settling into sleep. I told myself that once I got home and readjusted to Pacific Standard Time, all would return to normal with my sleep.
I’m sure it will not surprise the reader that once we got home, this did not happen. I continued to toss and turn, and get just a few hours of sleep a night, despite feeling exhausted. And it wasn’t good sleep. It was a lightweight, twilight experience, with hazy dreams blending in with reality. It was disorienting and disturbing. I thought that getting back to my exercise routine might help, since I could burn off some excess energy. I went for a short run one day, and it felt OK, but not great. I went for a slightly longer run with a friend the first weekend after our trip, and noticed a new symptom. My heart rate didn’t seem to be in sync with anything. My heart rate went up quickly, and my heart pounded in my chest. I felt out of breath and my heart rate seemed to take forever to slow down after the effort of a slow run. This was not normal for me. Even though I had taken a few weeks off running, we’d spent our vacation walking for hours per day and hiking when the weather permitted, so I hadn’t exactly been a couch potato. And I’d taken long trips many times to easily return to running.
I started to research what I could take to help me sleep. I read about melatonin, which I had taken once in my early thirties and not since, due to the most vivid, awful dream I have ever had. But feeling desperate, I took a small dose one night. My body immediately went into a deep sleep and I didn’t wake for nearly eight hours. What a relief! I felt so good that day. I had some energy and was able to enjoy the morning and be productive. Then at the grocery store that day, I had an odd experience. I felt a bit depersonalized and slow, as if I was walking under water. I assumed it might be a panic attack, but didn’t focus on it, and continued on with my shopping. The experience blew over in relatively short time, but I felt a bit off the rest of the day. I wondered if it had anything to do with the melatonin.
I took the melatonin a few more nights, and it seemed helpful, but the next few days, I started feeling really depressed in the morning, and then I would have this crazy spiraling up later in the day. The highs and lows of each day were distressing and made it hard to focus at work. I found a tea with some passion flower in it that was effective in calming things down a bit, but would then crash me down again later. The cycles were strange and I quit taking anything and made an appointment with my doctor, to learn what the heck was going on with my body. That call was the start of a frustrating foray into the medical world, and will be explored in future posts.