How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness by Toni Bernhard

Author:Toni Bernhard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wisdom Publications
Published: 2016-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

22

The Pesky Issue of Sleep

For you too, fleas, the night must be long it must be lonely.

— ISSA

CHRONIC ILLNESS can play havoc with those of us who try to follow traditional advice for good sleep. Hardly a week goes by without an article on proper sleep hygiene showing up during my internet wanderings. The recommendations may be good for some people; unfortunately they rarely work for a body that marches to the beat of chronic illness. In fact, some of them are downright irrelevant to our lives.

What follows is the conventional wisdom regarding sleep hygiene, along with my reflections on why it’s unlikely to work for those of us who are chronically ill. This lighthearted analysis is based on my personal experience and on what others have told me. That said, if any of these traditional tips work for you, terrific. Keep following them!

Conventional wisdom: Don’t use your bedroom for any activities other than sleeping or sex.

Yes, not just your bed, but your bedroom. The idea is to get your mind and body to associate the bedroom with sleep. Here are the types of activities on those “don’t-do-in-the-bedroom” lists: talking on the phone, listening to the radio, watching television, reading, using the computer, and the big one — working.

The most prominent object in most bedrooms is the bed. Those of us who are chronically ill use it a lot. I wrote my first two books from the bed and I’m writing this one from the very same place. It’s all happening in a four-foot-square space. I’d be able to call it a two-foot-square space except that my printer is four feet from the bed — still close enough, however, for me to reach with a good stretch of my left arm.

As you’ll see in chapter 41, my bed is my office, my craft center, my entertainment center, my dog playground, my dining room. From my experience, I’d be hard-pressed to find a chronically ill person who only uses his or her bed for sleeping and for sex.

Conventional wisdom: Go to sleep at the same time every night.

I try. I really do try. Unfortunately, pain and other symptoms — not the clock — dictate when I’ll be getting to sleep.

Conventional wisdom: Don’t nap during the day.

According to the sleep hygiene experts, the reason for this rule is that napping will disrupt your natural patterns of sleep and wakefulness. Unfortunately, for the chronically ill, those natural patterns have already been disrupted.

As for me, I can’t get through the day without a nap, not because I’m sleepy, but because after a certain amount of activity, my body breaks down the way a healthy person’s body breaks down when he or she has the flu. I’ve tried going without a nap just to be sure it’s necessary. The consequence is not a pretty sight. It’s not pretty that afternoon, nor is it the next day when I’m still experiencing “payback” symptoms from my little adventure. Oh, and I consider it a small victory if I only need one nap.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.