Sleep disturbance

Seelie

Hi my name is Seelie, I am d emended through lack of sleep, and as you all will know ,on enough medication without taking
sleeping pills . Anyone else ever went through a phase of
sleeplessness or turning day into night ,and is there any part of
the day when you feel a bit better ,TIA

[Deleted User]

Hi Seelie and welcome to the forum.

So sorry to hear you are having sleeping problems: often a problem when in pain. You may like to check this short article on tips for improving your sleep:

http://www.inspirearthritiscare.org.uk/features/6-tips-to-improve-your-sleep

Lack of sleep can also lead to fatigue, which can be very debilitating. The website has a resource leaflet to help cope with fatigue:

https://www.arthritiscare.org.uk/what-is-arthritis/resources/1208-fatigue-factsheet

Do ring the Helpline on 0808 800 4050 which is open Monday to Friday, 10am-4pm if you need to talk to someone.

Best wishes
Brynmor

bubbadog

I've been having disturbed sleep on and off for the last few months, I have posted about it, I seem to keep waking at between 4am and 5am every day. If I roll on to my left side I wake with a jolt as my left side is an extreme no go due to pain.

It's the side where I had my accident on, my left knee is a pain zone and my left foot and toe is major pain side that is being sorted on the 30th November! So I do try and not sleep on that side but when your half asleep you forget and roll then bang your a wake. I do take my Kindle and put it on my side so if I do wake I have something to do. But now I have a siesta in the afternoon. I seem to have more energy between 8am and 11am.

LignumVitae

I've suffered sleep disturbance for 15 years thanks to arthritis and I, like you didn;t want to take anything to make me sleep. About 6 months ago though I realised the bedtime codeine dose was doing nothing for me and went to see my lovely GP for a chat. He said he would prefer me to be on something else because increasing the codeine dose was only a short term solution. I reluctantly started to take amytriptaline which I had little faith in but the results are amazing. I sleep and that is a really exciting thing to do after 15 years of literally 3 hours sleep 3-4 times a week. I've maintained the lowest dose, so far I have had no side effects and I really wish I had done this sooner...oh and I've taken no more codeine which my stomach thanks me for. I do understand your reluctance but I have managed to actually drop my consumption of codeine and paracetamol which is great because it means I have those in my arsenal should I need them to get through a bad patch.