This morning I had to face the fact that the PTSD-related nightmares have returned. I knew that medications are not perfect but about 80-90% of the time they worked to keep them away. For the post 7 days, I have been having breakthrough nightmares every night. This means that something has to change because the medication regimen is no longer working. I reached out to my Psych PA over the patient portal to let him know what’s been happening. I really like and trust him so I am certain that he will respond soon and the two of us will hammer something out.
These dream are awful, almost like a horrific real life Salavador Dali-like painting; highly surreal dream of all the worst rejections in my life. I wake up panting, sweating, and completely startled. They’re so bad that I am almost afraid to go to sleep at night because the dreams are just that bad. The medication regiment I was on, Clonodine and Topamax, worked beautifully up until now. It seems like they just simply quit, almost like a switch got thrown and my evil brain said, “HA! I am not going to listen to that medication any longer. Here’s your horror movie!”
It has become a vicious cycle because I am now even more tired during the daytime, so when I need a nap, I reach REM sleep and it’s the same vicious cycle all over again. I get PTSD nightmares during the nap, I wake up in a sweat and dazed and confused. I am only working part time on the weekends but I am so tired that when I sit at my desk to try to work on a computer project I am literally falling asleep at my desk or if I watch TV the same thing happens. I am almost ready to cry at this point. I have got to get this nailed down before grad school starts or I will be between a rock and a hard place.
Dealing with mental illness is a constant battle and there are days when I grow sick and tired of it. There’s never any controlling the symptoms, there’s merely managing and reaching the acceptance that all I will do is manage them. That’s fine but the moment one thing gets a little bit out of management, the others start to fall like dominoes. I need to nip this one thing in the bud before this happens. Lack of good sleep is going create a cascading problem.