What's been happening to me since last November (or October)?

[Perkele]

I am a 23-year-old woman, and since November I haven't been myself. At least not consistently. My main complaint has been insomnia, but it's also much more complicated than that.

Last October I worked at KinderCare (may they rot in hell) for 2 weeks. It was a horrific expereince. I was driving home on what ended up being my last day, and was just hyperventilating and crying, and laughing hysterically.

Then I got home, and I was having dinner with my parents. My dad is a great person and tries to be helpful, but ends up making things way worse when you're in a bad mood. I just wanted to vent, but he kept giving me horribly obnoxious advice. I snapped on him, and I was screaming at him like I've never screamed before. Like it even scared me how I reacted.

Then my mom got mad at my dad, and the 2 of them started fighting. I went upstairs and laid on the floor and just screamed and cried and punched the floor like never before.

But I calmed down, went to bed, slept like a baby, and got up the next morning. While considering whether I should go back to work, I had another breakdown. And then I knew I was done.

I wrote a scathing resignation letter, and emailed it to my employer. It felt great! I was ready to move on.

The very next day I started looking for a new job. For a long time, I had been planning go abroad and teach English, and after KinderCare I decided I was ready to finally take the leap. So I started looking for a teaching job overseas, and as well as a temp job in my hometown.

I had a few bad nights towards the end of October, but I didn't think much of it. I wasn't feeling stressed or anxious.

During early November, I was doing pretty well still. I got hired at the local mall for the holidays. I was increasingly looking at teaching jobs abroad.

Then in mid-November, I started having real sleep problems. I started taking a combination of valerian root and melatonin, which I always used to use any time I had trouble sleeping. It worked, and I was getting 6+ hours of sleep again. But it stopped working after a few nights.

I continued having bad sleep most nights for 2-3 weeks. I should note that the sleep problems started 4 days before my period. I noticed because when I was a teenager I had insomnia before my periods. The difference was that now, it continued afterward as well. I wasn't sure if it was related.

After 2-3 weeks of insomnia I went to see my doctor. She told me to take 2 tabs of Benadryl every night and see if that worked. She said she thought it has nothing to do with my menstrual cycle.

The Benadryl worked for a couple weeks.  I was feeling great. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was working at the mall, and actually enjoying it. Compared to KinderCare it was stress-free and fun. I also got hired as an English teacher in Japan.

Then, around the same time of month (right before my period), the Benadryl stopped working and the insomnia started again. The new thing was that I was feeling hot at night.

Then I tried acupuncture.The acupuncturist told me that I had a "weak kidney", or in western terms, "low hormones." This made sense to me. I had her do the procedure on me. After that, I was sleeping 9 hours a night. I never slept that well even when I didn't have insomnia!

Around Christmastime I was working at the mall, preparing for Japan, and enjoying life. Insomnia felt like a thing of the past. Then, in early January, the acupuncture just stopped working. I was sleeping 4-5 hours every night, and after a couple weeks it really started to take a toll on me. I also started feeling hot at night again. I stopped doing acupuncture. I'm not sure if it matters or not, but again the insomnia came back a week before my period.

I had to cancel going to Japan because of the persistent insomnia.

I eventually went back to my GP, and she gave me trazodone. She also ran tests for blood platelet count and thyroid, to look for possible causes of feeling hot at night. They all came back normal.

I was started on the absolute lowest dose of trazodone (25 mg), and told I could increase every couple weeks as needed until I found my dose. For almost 3 weeks, I did great on initial dose.

Around the same time of the month in February, I started getting less sleep on the trazodone. I would wake up every morning after 5 hours of sleep. I tried increasing to 50 mg, but I actually slept worse the night I did that, so I went back to 25. Around this time, I started having a rapid/irregular heart beat at times.

I then tried to self-medicate with herbs. I started taking ashwagandha and vitex. Ashwagandha has always made me feel great, but vitex made me feel just horribly depressed. Fortunately it stopped once I stopped taking it. But now, rather than just feeling warm at night, my face started visibly flushing during the daytime. That has never really gone away.

Bad sleep continued most of the rest of February. I also developed the symptom of feeling like I had something stuck in my throat. Globus, I guess it's called.

Then at the end of the month, I decided trying to increase to 50 mg again. This time it worked! I was sleeping enough again. During this time (early March), my period came. I was overjoyed! Every other month the issue had started right before my period, but this time I was sleeping great. Maybe the problem was over? Maybe 50 mg was my dose of trazodone?

But the problem did come back. I went up to 75 mg trazodone, but the effects wore off quickly. Then I went up too 100.

Then, after my next period, I started taking a birth control pill. This is what I did when I was a teenager to treat my PMS insomnia, and it totally eliminated the problem. So I decided to try it again, to regulate hormones.

What really changed when I started the pill was that I got enough sleep most nights, with a few bad nights mixed in here and there. As opposed to full weeks of bad sleep and full weeks of good sleep.  All my other symptoms (facial flushing, periodic rapid/irregular heart beat, globus sensation) didn't totally disappear, but I felt like their character was shifting in many ways.

During April I did great. I felt well on my way to being my full self again. For an entire month I was a full functioning human being again. It was the best I'd felt since October.

Then, in early May, I started having pain in the tips of my 2 big toes. I know it was caused by exercise, particularly running.  I put some capsaicin cream on my toes (which I have used before), and the throat feeling started again (it had been gone for a few days), and I was sleeping 5 hours a night again. For a week basically. I was also getting the flushing again. I was like, what the hell? Topical pain relievers aren't supposed to do that.

I also had bad effects for other things I tried for the pain. Zyflamend (an herbal formula that used to be my magic cure for all kinds of pain), make me sweat, gave me tremors, and caused insomnia. Naproxen did the same. Epsom salt caused extreme itching.

Eventually I stopped taking anything. I've been sleeping well in general now (up to 200 mg on the trazodone), I've been swimming for exercise a lot to keep the toe pain down. But over the last few weeks I've started to have some anxiety. It's interesting, before this, I haven't had anxiety, despite the insomnia.

It's complicated. I really think, looking back, the extreme, stress KinderCare put me through started all this. I feel like it changed something physically. I feel like stress was the trigger, but not the ultimate cause of my symptoms, if that makes sense.

A lot of this doesn't seem to make medical sense, especially the strange side effects to medications that I used to use without a problem. I am seeing an endocrinologist at the end of the month, and I'm hoping he can figure something out.

Anyone who has any ideas, please share. I really appreciate it!

[SassyLassie]

Hello~Your symptoms all sound anxiety related. They could also be due to fluctuating hormones, which is why some things work sometime and at other times, they don't.  I would try Bio-identical progesterone cream, this can certainly help with insomnia, and the other symptoms you are describing. Also, and I know this will sound odd, but I would see a chiropractor. If you have any mis-alignments in your neck or upper back, you can experience insomnia and the other symptoms you write about, I feel this is the reason the acupuncture stopped working; once, however, you get the nerve channels open again, all should start to get better.