Sounds Like Weird
05 October 2014
I wasn’t able to sleep through the night, so I’m going to the ER. (I did manage to get a single spell of about 4 hours of sleep, but that was after 2 hours of tossing and turning to find a comfortable enough position where I could get to sleep. Every time I want to sleep, same thing.)
Because I have fibromyalgia, that means that I am now at risk for hurting worse for days than I was yesterday. Yesterday was the worst yet. Fibro’s kind of a weird feedback loop: your body thinks sensation should hurt rather than be neutral or pleasant.
As an example, Diamox, used to prevent altitude sickness, can cause a shimmery sensation across the skin. My body interprets that as pain. 🙁 That’s not normal, though.
Restorative sleep (stages 3 and 4) returns the body’s pain levels (and sensation interpretations) to more normal levels. Most of my restorative sleep comes at the end of my sleep cycle.
The pain levels get more normal during the restorative sleep cycle, but I only get that at the end of a night’s sleep.
So sleeping through the night undisturbed is key, and I haven’t been getting that consistently. Given my pain levels yesterday, it was absolutely necessary to get the pain under control so the sleep cycle returns to normal.
I also have myofascial pain, which means that trigger points (inflamed nodules where nerves enter muscles) send shooting pain down muscle bundles.
I’ve had a lot of general (fibro) pain and specific (myo) pain and a lot of whimpering nerves. I honestly cannot tell where the pain is coming from, and that’s with some significant amount of education on the subject (I just went through a chronic pain management program earlier this year).
Normally, I wouldn’t go to the ER unless my pain were actually a 10. For me, that’s nausea, vomiting, uncontrolled crying, etc.
A 9 includes inability to get to sleep or stay asleep, which is where I was yesterday, and frankly I’ve been at a long-term 8 or 9 for three weeks. (Note: these are my definitions of pain levels for me. A lot of people use 10 to mean something less.)
So I’m going to the ER, where they can take specialized measures to make me feel better.