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The Road to Better Sleep How to Tackle Insomnia LANA WALSH
I
spent my entire adult life half asleep. When I was in high school, my parents thought I was a typical teenager, staying up too late with a bad attitude. But at night, I tossed and turned. I’d wake several times, feeling like a boa constrictor was wrapped around my body and I would have to get up and rearrange my nightgown so I could breathe again. Finally, I just threw it on the floor in the hopes that I would finally be able to sleep through the night.
B
ut the months of insomnia didn’t end. When the alarm rang in the morning, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed and I would tell my mom I was too sick to go to school.
Later, I read an article about restless leg syndrome (RLS), and I knew right away that was my problem. RLS is an uncontrollable urge to move your legs and when you try to control it, you experience pain. The only relief was movement. Even though I knew what the problem was, it would take more than a decade to get it treated.
Throughout my life, I slept poorly, wide awake for hours in the middle of the night, it was hard to drag myself out of bed the morning. I was late to work every day. I nodded off at my desk and in meetings. I spent many days just reading blogs because I didn’t have the energy to think about work. I called in sick too often because I was just too exhausted to get out of bed.
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