Posted by mlecow555 on September 29, 2009 at 20:27:01:It's long, I know, but PLEASE READ and PLEASE HELP!!! ANY info is appreciated. :)
I need help. I am 15 years old. My problem is that I have extreme trouble waking up, not only in the morning, but anytime. I have a very busy schedule, so I don't always get an appropriate amount of sleep, but even when I get to bed early, I still can't wake up in the morning! I have three alarms on full blast, one of which is my phone alarm which I keep next to me on the bed, and I still can't wake up! The other two are in two different places in my room. I can't keep them on my bedside table because I'll unconsciously press snooze. I keep them far away so that I'm forced to get up and turn them off, because standing up is the only way I can regain consciousness. But sometimes standing up doesn't even wake me up. So far, the putting-the-alarm-clocks-far-away method hasn't worked because I just sleep through them...all three of them. So, my mom has to come wake me up in the mornings, but even then I sometimes don't wake up in time, because it takes her 30 minutes to an hour to wake me up. It's very stressful for her because she has to wake up 30 minutes to an hour early to make sure I wake up on time. It's also hard for her because apparently I get mad at her and say really horrible, mean things to her when she tries to wake me up in the morning, and I'm not a mean person, especially to her...she's like my best friend, and we rarely talk ugly to each other. But when I finally awaken, I don't remember saying a thing. Either I'm mean or I tell her lies (that I, again, don't remember telling) to try to get her to stop waking me up. And, again, I'm a generally honest person. For example, if I need to get up 30 minutes earlier than normal to finish some homework (because I'm too exhausted to do it at night), when she tries to wake me up, I'll tell her that I finished it the night before. When I finally wake up, I have no recollection, plus my homework isn't done. This condition or disorder or whatever it may be has really screwed a lot of things up, including my grades, because those assignments get turned in late because I unconsciously lie to my mom. I feel like I'm taken over by an evil twin when I sleep because I am TOTALLY out of character when I sleep. I hate it because it has put stress on my mom especially, but also my whole family, not to mention my performance in school. It stinks.... a lot...
Anyway, my last symptom is that I go into a deep sleep or unconscious state or something very soon after falling asleep. At, let's say, 5:30 pm, I can set my THREE, count them, THREE alarms for 5:35 pm. I will fall asleep within 30 seconds (at the most), and when the alarms go off a mere 4.5 minutes later, I sleep through them completely! Another example happened today at school. I fell asleep in the last five minutes of class because I had finished my work early. I meant to only put my head down, but ended up falling asleep. This time, however, it took me a whole 2 minutes or so to actually fall asleep because I was trying not to. That left about three minutes until the bell rang. When it rang, just like my alarms, it didn't wake me up. Someone had to bang on my desk repeatedly to wake me up. I was almost late to my next period class. So that proves that it takes only three minutes (or less) until I'm deep into sleep. It freaks me out because I have never fallen asleep in class, no matter how tired. I've spent whole school days without falling asleep when I got no sleep the night before, even though my eyes would shake and my head would bob because I was so tired but trying so hard to stay awake. But I got eight hours of sleep last night, and I couldn't keep myself awake for more than two minutes. This makes me think that it's getting worse because I just skipped the whole so-tired-that-my-eyes-shake-and-my-head-bobs stage and went straight to falling asleep. Finally, last thing (I promise!): on the weekends when I actually I have time to sleep, I sleep a lot, and I mean A LOT!! My typical free weekend (one that is not filled with choir or band or other school-related things) consists of 14-18 hour nights and 6-8 hour days. My record so far is 19 hours of sleep. I went to bed one Friday right after school (at 4 pm) and, although I had forgotten to turn off my three alarms that afternoon, I slept through them until 12 pm the next day. I continued my crazy weekend of sleep by going to bed that day at, again, 4 pm, and concluding it by waking up at 10 am that Sunday, just in time for church. In short, that's 19 hours of sleep, 5 hours of being awake, then another 17 hours of sleep, all the while sleeping through three alarms on full volume.So....here's the basic summary of my sleep problems:
-absolutely no trouble going to sleep (asleep in < 30 sec.)
-EXTREME trouble waking up (sleeping through alarms, not waking up even when standing, etc.)
-out of character when asleep
-excessive sleep when possible
-deep sleep within five minutes of going to sleepAGAIN, PLEASE HELP!!! My mother and I would be eternally grateful for ANY helpful info.