I had a lot of years dealing with insomnia and I remember when I was vacationing with my grandmother in the late 90's having to experience it there as well until 2015 when my hemoglobin has started to normalize by itself then my insomnia got alleviated and all those symptoms associated with anemia had improved particularly my taste for food until of course I had to take my Parathyroid medicine which spoiled all the party until today.
What I am glad about really was my ability to sleep. If I would try to sleep in the afternoon I can do so but in the evening my biological clock activates and then I would feel sleepiness. The classic sign is yawning because if I get that I would feel sleepy and I won't fight it by drinking coffee and such I will just turn off the laptop and I will rest.
It always feels like sleep is new to me and you can even read it in my blogs which documents my experience with it because of the changes I had done to my lifestyle which is basically quitting coffee drinking which I had thought before as the main cause of my sleep disturbance. So much so that I started to have dreams that in it I was running or just a nightmare and then I would wake up catching my breath because my heart is pumping fast.
Fortunately those episodes of bad sleep with racing heart and breathlessness are now gone for the most part which I am a million times thankful to God. Part of the improvement of my sleep was one, cutting back on coffee and two and the one that made my sleep pattern normalize is due to the fact that I am not anemic.
I am just trying to eliminate coffee completely but because sometimes I really have to wake up and push my body into the work mode and alleviate my mood into a positive level I just have to have a cup. We all know that coffee makes us happy, it is really a mood booster so I am always looking and longing for that boost so I can start my day.
Lately I am getting longer sleep but due to the fact that I am sleeping with a relatively uncomfortable bed and we are also living beside a road my sleep sometimes is disturbed or more often disturbed if you factor in my breathlessness issue and discomfort from pain.
But if I would take a pain reliever, my NSAID, I would feel a tremendous relief that s so nice that I am able to bath and use the toilet with relative ease compared to if I do not take that pain reliever. With all that pain relief makes me drowsy and so I would just sleep until I get enough or had been satiated my need for it.
In the case of Renal patients they get the insomnia because they lose blood. Their body just could not replace bloods that is lost due to the normal blood life in the body. Then symptoms of anemia would show like paleness, inability to sleep which is the insomnia, weakness, and loss of appetite to name a few.
So the cause of insomnia is anemia and it is resolved by eliminating the cause. For me the cause is gone and what I just have to do is to make my red blood cells get healthier by giving them the ability to reload and unload oxygen. That can be done by supplementing myself with iron.
A simple iron tablet can do the trick but what I do is to just take the iron with vitamin C to help my guts absorb my iron. I was doing it before but since my hemoglobin is up I just forgone the use of iron tablets. But maybe I could start again and see if there would be a noticeable result. It could improve my breathing too if the red blood cells are very efficient in bringing oxygen to my body's cells.
The good thing is that taking iron supplement again that I foresee is that I might be able to tolerate more the effects of hypotension while I am hooked-up at dialysis simply because my blood is efficiently giving me needed oxygen even when my heart is slowly pumping.
My dialysis center is giving most of the patients the option of getting the infusion of iron but for me it is not necessary anymore. I would just take the oral route as it is cheaper plus I already knew on how to make my body absorb more of it.
My sleep and its changes are a big deal to me, I experienced a lot of hardship and misery just to get some minutes of sleep and getting affected by it only to be scolded by my mother telling just to close my eyes and keep quiet. But of course none of us then understood what I was experiencing.
There are many instances when I am taking a bath and I would shake in coldness because I am anemic and I cannot tolerate the cold even though I still take a bath a few times a day. Now I enjoy bathing even if it is cold because I do not tremble and shiver all throughout the process.
A long time ago I prayed to God to heal my anemia, he did and now here I am. It is because I said that if only I do not have this complication I will be like a normal person but obviously a similar condition just made my life miserable again, my Leontiasis, a bone condition arsing from being a dialysis patient for a long-term period.
Well anyway funny thing is that no one regard this phenomenon as a miracle but myself only, but that's okay. What is important is that I am free from anemia, insomnia, decreased tolerance to cold, and all things associated with anemia. But I just have to tackle a few big problems again, I needed prayers, all the prayers in the world. May God help me.