I'm 29 years old and for as long as I can remember, I've been waking up during sleep. When I was younger, I would sleepwalk around the house, flicking on lights and falling asleep somewhere else other than my bed. I eventually grew out of the sleepwalking but now...well, let me explain. One night I awoke, thinking there was some sort of crustecean crawling across the ceiling. I shot out of the bed and went running to the stairs, but by the time I reached the stairs, I realized what I was doing, calmed down, and went back to bed. Another time I shielded my wife with heavy covers because I thought a crow was trying to peck our eyes out. Again, I came to my senses within 10-15 seconds and I was okay.
My problem is while I wake up and think I am seeing things, I wake up constantly. I don't always see things, but my mindset is stuck in the dream for a moment, to which I eventually reset and realize what is going on. I can fall asleep quickly because I'm usually always tired but every other night I have issues actually staying asleep. When I wake up, my mindset isn't always urgent; sometimes I just wake up and happen to see something that was in my dream, while other times my mindset is more fight or flight and I react like a crazy person.
Since November 2008 I've been suddenly feeling sick with high blood pressure, low body temperature, and all sorts of fatigue. My muscles don't seem to recover as quickly as they used to (had to stop bowling because my chest, arms and legs were hurting) and if I just gently bend my wrist a certain way, my entire hand shakes. Its like I'm tired and I can sleep for 6,7,8,9,10, or even 11 hours and I never feel 100%.
I've had sleep studies done and due to my weight, the doctors found that I have very slight sleep apnea (I think the one stat was anything over 5 was abnormal and mine was 5.6) but a CPAP didn't seem to work and I never showed any sort of crazy reactions while in the sleep study. My ENT does think that there is something wrong with my thyroid as the removal of a cyst found some papillary tissue, which could have a possible link to thyroid cancer.
Could my craziness of waking up in the middle of the night be the cause of my symptoms? Would anxiety meds at night possibly calm me down or quell my waking up? Or maybe something wrong with my thyroid could be causing this? I'm not a stressful person either; anyone who knows me knows that I am very chill and hardly ever let anything get to me so I doubt that stress is causing my lack of sleep. The pulmonologist who did my sleep studies (3 to be exact) could not find anything really wrong that would cause the symptoms that I am having.