Sleep Disturbances

[sharonov]

I am 18 days post retro-sigmoid surgery and have been off steroids for over a week.  Of course I'm not 100% healed, but am doing well overall.  No more pain pills, still pain at the incision site but nothing like the trigeminal neuralgia pain I was having before the surgery, this I can handle easily.  I went to a play a couple of days ago, walk to the store and drugstore, etc. 

So why do I keep waking up two hours after going to sleep, feeling as if it's morning?  Before surgery I usually slept the night unless I had to urinate.  Now, it's every two hours!!  Since I've always found it hard to FALL asleep, this means I have to go through half an hour of self-soothing 4 or more times a night!  I did a search but found that most people with sleep problems either had pain keeping them awake or were still on steroids. They gave me a prescription for ambien before I left the hospital, and that will give me 5 hours of sleep, but I don't want to become psychologically dependent on pills (supposedly ambien isn't physically addictive.)

Anybody with my problem?  And did it go away?

[bethtretrault]

I have always been a light sleeper and am even more so now. For me, I think I am just hyper aware and so every time I roll over I wake up or maybe every time I wake up (maybe I am uncomfortable?) then I roll over. I do sometimes think that I would probably feel fabulous if I could just go to bed, sleep for 7 hours straight and THEN get up.

[Kathleen_Mc]

18 days post op is not that long and you need adequate REM sleep to promote healing, speak to your family doctor about short term options in medications......it is my believe if you don't want to take them, and only use them for a brief period, u won't have an issue in terms of addiction physically or psychologically. There are herbal medications that promote sleep but again this must be cleared by your doctor as many contain things that are a BIG no-no for those of us who have had surgeries such that we have.
Kathleen

[Enri]

I used to have problems falling asleep long before the surgery.  I got used to sleeping while playing the sounds of the ocean all night.  It just helps me fall asleep when I wake up in the middle of the night. 

[Eddie]

I think it's normal because you're coming off the steroids. (They gave me really bad side effects too, i had insomnia and really bad case of acne breakouts all over my body /face)

It took about a month off steroids before everything went back to "normal" for me.

[surfagain]

I don't have any solutions and I am coming up on one year since surgery.  I wake up almost every night like it's daytime. This is having an affect on my ability to function at high level each day. No one has offered a reason for this. I hope it improves for you.  I read that the pons is located in the brain stem and it is responsible for rem sleep.  My tumor was large. Possibly did some damage.