Sleep (General)

[darylt]

This is my first post, but I will try to keep it brief....

I am 32 and a Paramedic in the UK. I suffer from High Blood Pressure Underactive Thyroid and am medicated for Cholesterol.

I found that I kept falling asleep at the wheel and decided that I needed to stop driving and needed to do something about this. After looking back I had realised that my sleepiness had been going on for some time and now included falling asleep in conversations with patients... not good!

I have been assessed for OSA which all sleep studies came up negative. Its not shift work as I haven't done any for 7 months.

I’m due to see a neurophysiologist today to start from the beginning again.

I do not know how long I fall asleep for, it may only be parts of a second, but if I ignore it the episodes become more frequent and last for longer. My longer sleeps normally involve very vivid dreams and can happen when I am doing anything although its normally when I am less active or less stimulated. I wake up feeling good, but soon start feeling very tired after being awake for 2 hours and can already start feeling my eye lids falling. A 30minute sleep is the minimum I need after lunch so that I can function normally in the afternoon, however I sleep an average of 8 hours every night of seemingly undisturbed sleep and would like to have 2 hours every afternoon.

Another annoying symptom is the loss of memory - only the day before yesterday my car was parked outside my garage where my wife parks - I asked her why she put it there and she explained that she hadn't - I have no recollection of even driving my truck, let alone parking it there or even a reason why I would park it there!

I feel I have bored you enough now – what do you think?