Driving with Hypersomnolence

Me, on a three hour drive, making a pit stop in an attempt to wake myself up.

I have a lot of reasons to be tired, exhausted, or sleepy most or all the time - enough, in fact, to be able to tell you the differences between the three descriptors. They are not interchangeable in my world.

The symptom is hypersomnolence (too much sleepiness) and it can be a side effect of seasonal allergies, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, bipolar disorder, and several of the medications I take. In addition, it is tiring for a body to have to carry out any semblance of a daily routine while also shouldering several chronic health issues. Finally, someone as introverted as I am gets tired out quickly in social situations. If I'm honest my life is generally one great big exhausted struggle with rest and sleep.

By far the activity that is most affected by this is my driving. Sure, I can fake it around town if it's a short trip, but I have cancelled activities with people due to being unsafe to drive. Usually it's because I'm in a mixed manic/depressive state which, for me, creates a dangerous driving condition, so I'm really not up for doing anything anyway. Once in a while, though, I'm just too sleepy - or sometimes drugged-feeling, if I'm trying a new med - to get behind the wheel. It's not an optimal situation, but it's the correct decision to make in my current circumstance. If I'm ever unsure of whether I can drive or not, I ask myself if I would be happy if some random jackass in my state drove past my sister pushing my nephew in his stroller. No? You're not driving, then.

Sometimes, though, driving somewhere is not a choice.

This week I had my allergist appointment, which involves a two day trip, a hotel stay, and about three and a half hours of driving each day. The appointment itself went well - and I may go into some detail about that later this week - but the drive itself was extremely difficult. In addition to the things I've described above I wound up having an unfortunate side effect to a medication I was trying: constant dizziness to the point of motion sickness at times. None of this really mattered in the long run, though, because I had to somehow make it to and from my appointment in one piece.

When you have as many problems with sleepiness and grogginess as I do you come up with some ways to keep yourself going.

The most obvious way of waking up (and, indeed, so far from my realm of experience that I forgot to write about it in my first draft of this post) is coffee or another caffeinated drink. Caffeine gives me the opposite effect - it drugs me to the point of actually falling asleep while walking and, yes, that can actually happen - and just smelling coffee brings about anaphylaxis. Along a similar line of thought, caffeine or other pep pills clearly aren't an option. 

My usual first line of defense is to pull over and take a nap. Generally I have no problems doing this whatsoever, but it is honestly still far too hot outside to do so, even if I left the car running with the air on. I did some night driving as well (hoped to capitalize on the relative awakeness I tend to have at night right now, but it wasn't enough to help) in the middle of Wisconsin where there are no towns, lights, or roving police cars - and I was too single and female to stop for a nap.

In absence of naps (or if the nap didn't work) my next step is to eat. Eating and sleeping are incompatible activities, and while driving I have enough energy for the eating to win out over the sleeping urge. My diet has unfortunately been limited as of late and I didn't bring anything that was easy to eat on the road. Thanks to a recent medication, however, I was able to find some chips at a pit stop to keep me going. Unfortunately my system is not used to such fare and I eventually felt too gross to continue eating my road food.

...so I resorted to a little physical pain. The sleepiness issues really started for me during puberty, so I developed some non-obvious ways to inflict pain on myself if I started falling asleep in class. I used to put my tongue between my teeth and rest my head in my hand; then, when I started to get too comfortable, gravity would naturally make me bite my tongue. Leaning into a mechanical pencil pressed against your gut works, too. As I got older and these techniques didn't cause as much pain anymore, I'd actively bite my tongue or stab myself in the hand or gut just to try to concentrate. Now that I drive these techniques have been developed for the car. Hard tongue- or lip-biting, pinching, driving my nails into my palm, making myself bounce in my seat, face-slapping - all of these are employed behind the wheel. I couldn't do the seat bouncing this week as I'm on my period, and my skin was too reactive to pinch without severe immediate or future itching, so I spent hours damn near chewing on my tongue or surprising myself with hard slaps to the face while trying to stay awake. I'm kind of surprised that I didn't draw blood. Doing so is not an oddity.

The unfortunate part of all of these techniques is that they don't really correct the problem. It's akin to laying under a warm blanket and lifting up part of the cover once in a while to let some cold, uncomfortable air in so you don't fall asleep. You'll stay awake a moment longer, but the blanket is still there and the gasps of cold air you allow underneath it warm quickly. What I need is something to rip that metaphoric blanket off but, thus far, I haven't found it yet. It most likely doesn't exist.

I made it there and back safely and, aside from waking up at 9AM to give my dog his medication, I woke up at 4PM today. The headache is starting to go away but I'm again extremely dizzy, confused, and unable to concentrate. Looks like I'll be researching side effects and withdrawl symptoms from the medication I was trying. Today is a Bed Day whether I wanted it to be one or not. 

...and a day with absolutely NO driving.