Fighting insomnia with melatonin

Well... I am surely a hard-headed rascal sometimes. I've been struggling with sleep issues for a while. Even before my diagnosis with breast cancer. However, I will definitely say that going through the treatment for my cancer has increased my anxiety and made my insomnia worse. Some months ago, my oncologist expressed displeasure that I was still taking the prescribed sleep aid ambien. (yes, he wrote me the prescription) I suppose that he was concerned that I was becoming dependent on them. I'm not sure that I would call it dependency... but I was thrilled to be able to sleep through the night and an added bonus was no nightmares!

Score! (by the way, PTSD is real -- my nightmares are attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder, sigh)

Anyway... after Dr. S basically told me that he didn't want to write me another prescription I felt that I would be okay with over the counter pills. (shrug) I'd used them in the past with very mixed results but I hoped that I could find a combination that worked for me this time.

Yikes! Let's just say that my body doesn't really care for the OTC sleep aids. Ambien was a god-send. Unisom (and others like it) felt like they came straight from the devil himself. The beauty of Ambien was that I could take it, fall asleep within 30 minutes and wake up feeling fine and refreshed. I would experience a restful night's sleep and that was the goal. OTC's on the other hand, yuck. None of the above. I would regularly over-sleep. It could take as long as 2 hours before the pills kicked in. And... when I did wake up, I would likely be groggy for hours. Really not a good look at all. But I was trying to figure things out... because I knew if I went back to Dr. S to ask for more Ambien, it was going to be a challenging conversation.

Sigh. I'll be honest, I tried a lot of things. Including taking Nyquil -- yep, the cold medicine -- just to get some sleep. Nyquil sleep isn't bad at all and didn't have the same grogginess problem that the generic pills had. However, I got creeped out by the notion of taking more medicine than I needed just to get some sleep.

I tried tea. I tried taking a warm bath. I didn't try warm milk but that's because milk upsets my stomach and that really would have interrupted my sleep. I tried a lot of things that people suggested. (laughs) I'm giggling now but for months I was struggling. And then I gave up on taking anything. Just said eff it ('scuse my language) and decided to just let my body do what it wanted to. It worked because my schedule was different and I could sleep late if I needed to. However, it wasn't a great plan because my body really was having difficulty calming down and getting good rest.

Well, one thing I didn't try that I had heard worked was melatonin. I didn't believe it would work honestly. I don't have a lot of faith in herbal supplements. Most of the time, they just don't do for me what they do for others. (shrug) But finally, a couple of weeks ago I remembered to pick up some melatonin while I was at the drugstore. And I crossed my fingers that I hadn't (once again) added more crap to my "breast cancer graveyard of useless stuff that I'll never use"...

It took a few tries to get to a dosage that worked for me. But, it WORKS. In fact, the melatonin got my body back to a normal sleep pattern and I don't have to take it every day, like I had to take my Ambien every day (though, I looked forward to my Ambien sleep in a major way). I take it every few days or so... when I realize that I'm off in my sleep pattern (like tonight) and then I'm right side up soon enough.

In fact, I'm so sleepy typing this post that I can't even believe that I haven't conked out yet. (laughs)

So, if you're experiencing sleep issues... try some melatonin. I'm a witness that this stuff is the truth. Now, I'm looking for something to help me with these night sweats...