Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?'
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So I've been having a problem lately with waking up in the middle of the night. This is not unusual for me, though. It happens -all the time-. Throughout my entire life. Hooray for insomnia and other assorted badness.
Recently it's taken on a different spin as when I wake up I am unable to read for a few minutes. I look at my alarm clock and it is random symbols. I pick up a book I keep by my bed and it is like alien hieroglyphs. None of it makes any sense. It takes me at least 2 to 3 minutes before my brain well actually let me read.
The oddest part is that I can generally read just fine in my dreams. I've even had dreams that are primarily text (thanks to MUSHing. Fuck you, MUSHing!) So... anyone have any idea what the deal is?
Question number two: Sometimes I have extreme feelings of deja vu coupled with severe nausea. Never separate. Always those two things together. It happens at random times and random places with random people. While at work, while at my apartment... thankfully not while I'm driving yet, but still. It's a really weird, specific symptom to have. And it only happens once a week at most. Looking it up (without going to a real doctor because lolhealthcareinamerica) gave me 'mild epileptic petite mal seizure' as the likely cause. Anyone out there have any experience with this?
Also please feel free to use this thread for your own weird questions. There's probably another thread somewhere about it but I'm too lazy to search for it.
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For the first, I'd look at hypnopompia. There is a specific aspect of it called 'sleep intertia:' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_inertia. You may not actually be fully awake. Almost everyone experiences certain (expected) levels of sleep inertia. That sort of stumbling, 'not yet coherent' feelings as your body wakes up. But since you're waking up in the midst of your proper sleep cycle, your mind may just be incapable of processing complex symbols (text).
I used to get hypnogogic hallucinations (the mirrored part: what occurs as you fall asleep) really bad, myself.
For the other... dunno. Sounds like vertigo, which can come with weird sense of 'place of self.' Vertigo for me often comes with a sensation of being out of sync with the rotation of the earth.
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@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
Question number two: Sometimes I have extreme feelings of deja vu coupled with severe nausea. Never separate. Always those two things together. It happens at random times and random places with random people. While at work, while at my apartment... thankfully not while I'm driving yet, but still. It's a really weird, specific symptom to have. And it only happens once a week at most. Looking it up (without going to a real doctor because lolhealthcareinamerica) gave me 'mild epileptic petite mal seizure' as the likely cause. Anyone out there have any experience with this?
...kinnnnnnnda. It was when I was much younger. Stopped before I was out of college, but happened more or less all my life before then.
The weirdest weird bit? It was always between footsteps.
As in, 'lift foot; time is suddenly completely out of joint, it feels like a lifetime has passed or time skipped or this has all happened before and it all pours into the brain in a whallop that makes that blip of a second feel like ages; only return to the moment when the foot has managed to forget what the heck it's supposed to be doing waggling up there in the air and land the step with a baffled wobble'.
...I usually didn't fall over. Usually! But, no, really, I'm serious. All manner of weird happens to or around me all the time but that one always stood out as super weird, and this is the closest I have ever heard to someone describing it. @Auspice's vertigo explanation weirdly works for it since it would massively mess with my balance, but it never felt like 'I can't balance', but more... 'whaaaaaaa-what is that what is happening, what am I doing, let's do the time warp again, hey I'm walkin' here, wait what -- OH HI FLOOR'.
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I don't think vertigo is involved in it. I mean, I have had vertigo before but this doesn't feel like the world is tilting or off kilter. It just feels like really, really, super intense deja vu. Like a conversation or thing I know I've done before. And the nausea comes with it.
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@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
I don't think vertigo is involved in it. I mean, I have had vertigo before but this doesn't feel like the world is tilting or off kilter. It just feels like really, really, super intense deja vu. Like a conversation or thing I know I've done before. And the nausea comes with it.
Please go see a neurologist.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@ganymede said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
Please go see a neurologist.
Probably the only free advice you'll ever get from an attorney. Do as the lawyerbot says.
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@ganymede said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
Please go see a neurologist.
+1. What you're describing could be many things - some of which are very serious. So now you have free lawyerbot advice and free paramedic advice.
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@admiral
Seconding the other folks. Not normal, could be super serious. Doctor advised.
Please. If you can't afford it because lolhealthcare, I hear crowdfunding that shit is a thing. Hint. Hint. -
I will call around to clinics next week, then. I've had the deja-nausea symptoms for months and months now. The other one has just been the last few nights.
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@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
for months and months now
You know what is a sign is that you need to get something looked at?
This. This is a sign that you need to get something looked at.
Fingers crossed.
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Seriously sounds like a form of Sleep Apnea.
Definitely see a doctor and see if you need to get a sleep study done.
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Apnea? I know people with that and I breathe just fine when I sleep. My breathing is, as a certain politician might say, 'The best. The biggest. Yuge. Stable genius breathing.'
I am gonna look into that though, I was unaware that might be a potential thing.
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@admiral If you have Apnea you might not even know you have it, if the occurances of it are low enough.
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@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
Apnea? I know people with that and I breathe just fine when I sleep. My breathing is, as a certain politician might say, 'The best. The biggest. Yuge. Stable genius breathing.'
I am gonna look into that though, I was unaware that might be a potential thing.
Part of the sleep study is a full neurological and EKG test throughout the sleep period. They put a crap-ton of wires on you and on your head to study brain-waves as well, so even if it's not apnea, they likely will find something if it's neurological in nature.
Regardless, the waking up every night needs to be resolved, as it interrupts your alpha waves in sleep and that's no bueno.
