Tag Archives: Insomnia

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream?

Posted on by
1
Now that I’m sleeping five, six even seven hours at a time, rather than two or three hours, I’m starting to feel like an expert! It’s only taken me four or five years and a long list of trial and error:

  1. Recommendations from Say Goodnight to Insomnia
  2. Supplements from SHINE protocol and various doctors
  3. Hypnosis
  4. Ambien & Trazodone
  5. Brain Training
  6. Heparin injections

I still need a lot of help with my sleep but the pills usually work now and I don’t need as many. Other than the obvious difficulty of being awake at night, I would say the most challenging part was the Heparin injections which I had to administer myself. I’ve always been gung ho about doing whatever it takes to recover from CFS/FMS but when it came to teaching me to put a needle in my own flesh, I had to be pushed.  Continue reading →

Sometimes, a Tantrum Is a Good Thing

Posted on by
8

Or, What Causes Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & Fibromyalgia?

I was finally having a tantrum. In dealing with about three years of being mysteriously disabled, getting diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and facing unhelpful doctors, my attitude had always been to stay focused and solve the problem. Just the solutions ma’am!

Then I discovered Jacob Teitelbaum’s book From Fatigued to Fantastic. He is a medical doctor who had conducted clinical trials on an effective protocol for treating severe chronic fatigue states. After all that time trying to explain to doctors how debilitating my daily experience was, he was describing it exactly without ever having met me. What?! Continue reading →

Do You Think I Should Send This Letter?

Posted on by
2

Do you think I should send this letter to “Addison“? Please tell me by selecting yes or no at the end of this post!

Dear Dr. Addison,

I thought you might like to know what has happened with my health since we last spoke in 2006. You may remember that at the beginning of that year, I complained of fatigue that prevented me from working or leading the life I knew in any way; unquenchable thirst; feeling like I had been hit by a truck after I tried to push through my fatigue and go for a small walk; insomnia; various kinds of digestive distress; and pain in my joints, particularly my wrist. It turns out that I’m suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Fibromyalgia Syndrome (CFS/FMS).

Because of problems defining chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, I prefer to use the following definition: Continue reading →

Recovery

Posted on by
12

How will I know when I have recovered? This question is not as easy as it may first appear.

My original plan for recovery was to go back to what I was doing. This was Evangelist Marketing, a business I’d just started and, a social life! I assumed getting better would be a small detour. There were some concerns in my mind about whether I would be able to handle running a solo business but I’m a responsible person and the backup plan of getting another job was acceptable to me.

That was five years and seven months ago. Continue reading →

Amazing Coincidence

Posted on by
7

It was about 3am early to middle 2007. Dr. Young’s protocol was bringing me improvement but my sleep had continued to deteriorate. In desperation, I got out of bed and onto the internet where I discovered “Say Good Night to Insomnia: A Drug-Free Program Developed at Harvard Medical School”.

The data from the first week of tracking my sleep was shocking. Three hours a night? This was no way to heal! As I followed the program in the book, I hit a bump with the step where I was supposed to listen to a “Relaxation Response” recording. The phone number in the appendix was no longer Dr. Jacobs’. Continue reading →