A Miserable Night of Sleep

Last night was one of those nights when you simply cannot sleep and you end up getting up out of bed at 5:30am because you know sleeping is a lost cause.  This is exceptionally rare for me but it was my night last night.

I was having a little bit of difficulty breathing last night after going to bed but I wouldn't call those breathing difficulties anything more than mild.  Needless to say, that was the start of my lack of sleeping.  I was lying there wondering, "Should I go get my inhaler and epinephrine?  Or, will this pass?"  The problem is that if I get up to retrieve my inhaler and epinephrine, that act alone will cause me to lose some sleep because I'll need to calm down again and slow my heartrate down again in order to have any chance of falling asleep.  If I need to take epinephrine, that will keep me up for a while too.  So, I laid there wondering what to do which is also a sign that my breathing difficulties were no worse than mild.

Then, I couldn't get comfortable.  Everything hurt.  My bones hurt.  My joints hurt.  My spine was screaming.  No matter what I did, I could not get comfortable enough to relax my body.  I could actually feel that I was a bit tense.  

Then, as I was lying there attempting to fall asleep, eyes closed, trying to relax each part of my body and breathe, there was this blinding white light and a deafening crack like a bolt of lightning had struck inside our bedroom right over my head.  I jumped up, startled, heart racing.  Sheila was still sound asleep as though nothing had happened so I concluded that I must have seen and heard that bolt of lightning inside my own body.  

This happens every so often to me for some reason.  I don't know why.  When I tell my doctor about it she just says, "Huh!" with a small shrug of the shoulders.  It startles me enough that there is no way to sleep for the next hour or two no matter how exhausted I may be.  

It is very much like my description above...  like a bolt of lightning struck right over my head and it feels like that too.  I can only assume that all my synapses fire off at the same instant...  throughout my entire body...  making me see a blinding white flash of light even in my closed eyes...  making me hear a deafening arcing of high voltage electricity like a lightning bolt...  and causing every muscle to contract for just a lightning fast instant.  I find myself sitting upright in bed, panting, wondering if what I saw and heard was real.  Well, this happened again last night as I was trying to fall asleep.  Once you are startled like this, sleep is not much of an option.

Then I heard a mouse...  I even was able to hear his path through the house.  I'll have to remember this tidbit of information so I can put out a couple of mouse traps one evening this week.

I did manage to get about two or three hours of sleep but then I awoke very early this morning...  around 4:30am...  and couldn't fall back to sleep.  

I was having nightmares in the short time I slept.  There is nothing new about that.  I have bothersome, frightening, sometimes terrifying nightmares quite often...  a few times a week.  On a rare occasion, a nightmare might keep me from even wanting to fall back asleep.  Most times, I just roll over and go back to sleep though.  Last night's nightmares were sort of teetering between dream and nightmare so they paled in comparison to my typical nightmares.  The deafening and blinding lightning bolt that seemed to strike right over my head suddenly definitely kept me from wanting to shut my eyes again though.

I'm exhausted but I can't sleep.  Now, I was lying in bed and listening to the furnace make some odd rattling noises.  There was no way I was falling asleep now!  The furnace was now bothering me and sort of worrying me.  It was actually bothering me more than my nightmares or the crazy, jump-starting, startling lightning bolt.  It finally gets frigid outside and now the furnace begins to sound odd!

Sheila's alarm went off moments later at 5:30am so I got up, knowing full well that the odd noises from the furnace were now keeping me awake.  I used the bathroom quickly and then immediately went for my tools.  Something wasn't right and I was going to find it.  If we need service in the coming days, I want to get a jump start on that before we lose heat.  

I tightened up some screws that had loosened over time.  I vacuumed the drum fan which had a bit of stuck-on dust.  While I had the vacuum out, I cleaned up everything else inside and around the furnace.  Then I pulled off the furnace filter...  hmmm...  that should have been replaced last season.  That certainly wasn't helping anything if the furnace was having difficulty sucking air into the plenum.  I installed a new filter.  

By now, I had the furnace shut off for about 45 minutes and it was cool enough in the house for the thermostat to kick on the furnace again so I closed the furnace and turned it on...   it kicked on normally...  no vibrations, no odd sounds, it actually sounded pretty good.  On the positive side, I seemed to have resolved the odd sounding furnace issue.  

This difficulty sleeping thing is a bit odd for me since I've had systemic mast cell disease.  I typically could sleep through a hurricane once my body says it is time for rest.  The grandkids could be playing around me making the noisy racket that normally make and it does not keep me awake once my body is exhausted.  Nothing can keep me awake.  Yet, today, I'm exhausted and needing sleep yet I'm having great difficulty sleep.  

At least the furnace seems to be fixed.