Painsomnia = no sleep; no sleep = a sad ginger 3

Sleep = recovery; not only for my body building/muscle repair but combat lupus fatigue and pain repair.

Here is how my nights have looked lately;

Pain + flare + stress from pain/flare + discomfort from so much pain + PAIN = painsomnia = no sleep.

For a while it was common for me to only get 2 to 4 hours of sleep a night, I was/am in so much pain that the idea of sleeping is a beautiful story.  This lack of sleep creates a horrible cycle – painsomina = sleep deprivation = stress = flare = more pain = more no sleeping.  The flares that accompany me to bed also create stress sleep, filled with night terrors that wake me up and help me to not go back to sleep.

I lay awake knowing that sleep is the only reprieve I will get from the pain.  That somehow, if I could just fall asleep and have 6-8 hrs of straight sleep the pain would be less in the morning.  Aside from helping the lupus chronic pain, sleep affects everything; the way I think, my productivity and my mood.  Painsomina helps me to feel more hopeless about my illness, my situation – makes me angrier at life, at the situation, at the hand I’ve been dealt.

This is something I do not really talk about very often, I like to pretend that it doesn’t exist in my head; but after a week of not sleeping well…. It pours out my ears and oozes out of my pores.  If this flare would just calm, I could get sleep and I would be ok.

Sleep helps the immune function regulate, in studies sleep deprivation has been linked to increased inflammation…. Increased inflammation = increased symptoms = increased pain & longer flare.  This morning I woke up angry!

Angry that again I did not sleep, again this flare is persisting, again my pain is outrageous, again my joints and bones ache and won’t move.

I wake up exhausted, trudge through my day exhausted, workout exhausted and go to bed exhausted (and not fall asleep exhausted) all with a smile on my face.  I do all of this without complaining, without making anyone else uncomfortable to know my pain, and while trying to remain positive.

I have barely slept this week, but I might tonight… Sorry for the vent!

http://lupus.newlifeoutlook.com/insomnia-and-lupus-flares/