Friday, September 14, 2018

Dreams

I remember dreaming when I was a kid, I would have nightmares as well. Growing up I was told by my superstitious mother that if you woke up smiling from a dream it was a bad omen but if you woke up crying from one it was a good sign. I always thought to myself she had to have had that backwards. I can't remember the last time I had a dream before today. I honestly can't....without noticing I stopped dreaming sometime in my teens and before I was the wiser my nights would just be a blackout of six to eight hours.

Somewhere in my life I had stopped dreaming and it wasn't something that really worried me. Every night when I went to bed it was just pitch black no dreams nothing. I would later find out in my adult life that dreams only happen in REM sleep. Your body needs to go into deep sleep for you to be able to have dreams, and people who snore sometimes could not dream because the snoring interfered with going into deep sleep or it would interrupt it. I knew from girlfriends, family and friends that I snored like a  rusty chainsaw.

What I didn't know was not only did I snore, I would actually stop breathing during the night and gasp for air continuously and as the years went by it became worse. I have been recently diagnosed with severe obstructive sleep apnea. My case is so dire that its life threatening and I only found out because I began to fall asleep at the most inopportune times. I would fall asleep at my desk writing up an email, in a boring meeting, when I drove long distances (this scared me). For all intents and purposes I was suffering from narcolepsy but the cause was not neurological.

Skip to today and I am now on a cpap machine to breathe while I sleep, and although its only been a couple days I feel so energised during the day. Its like night and day now my energy levels compared to before, but what got me back here on blogger after so many years was that last night I had a dream. I dreamt something, and when I woke up I knew immediately I had just woken up from one. I teared up, not because of what I dreamt but because of the feelings that welled up in me knowing that I had a fucking dream and that means I'm finally getting REM sleep. I am finally resting and sleeping like a normal person.

I am excited now for the nights, eagerly awaiting the possibilities of what my next dream will be.

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