Sleep Disturbance

One may woneder why I am up blogging at the moment. One of the side effects of taking the steroid decadron is that it greatly disrupts your sleep pattern and makes you become somewhat manic. I told my mother about it yesterday and she requested that I create an entry in my blog so that others who may need to take decadron may know what to expect.

Pretty much when I am on the full dose of 4 mg a day I get between 3 to 5 hours of sleep. It really varies. With the diamox I have to use the restroom alot so sometimes I wake up every hour to 2 hours. It seems common for me to either wake at 3 in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep or lie down at midnight or 1 am and awake for the day at 4 or 4:30 am and require in hour or two nap in the midmorning or early afternoon.

Friday evening I fell asleep probaby around 11 or 11:30 pm. Then I awoke at 1:30 am and I don't think I went back to bed until 4 or 4:30 am. Then I awoke for the day on Saturday morning about 7:30 am and required a nap from 11 am to noon.

Just this evening I fell asleep on the couch after watching a netflix at about 11:30 pm. I woke up at 1 or 1:30 am and here I am again. I will try to lie back down and get some sleep. Sometimes it is hard to go back to sleep and my mind is rapidly turning with ideas and thoughts about everything I need to accomplish for the day. It is like when you are a kid on the night prior to the first day of school and you cannot sleep. Sometimes I lie there for a few hours and finally get to sleep in the wee hours of the morning (between 5 or 7 am).

I like having the motivation when on the steroids but it is frustrating not to get consistent and adequate sleep. When I taper off the medicine this pattern makes me extremely fatigued and I could sleep all day once the medicine is stopped.

By the way, that is what happened when I got back from vacation. I finished the medicine on a Monday and lied around in my pajamas and slept all day. I did the same on Tuesday and by Wednesday I became very sick again and needed to get a new prescription of the steroids from my doctor so I could function (I had a bad migrane that tylenol would not remedy, increased crainal pressure, was vomiting again, had vertigo, serious imbalance, and double vision again).