This is my personal history of sleep. It is comprised of two parts. This first section details sleep performance from before the injury up to May 2013. The following post provides evidence of sleep dysfunction in 2013.

Before the Injury

My first job out of university was in marine SAR. Sailors are renowned for their ability to fall asleep anywhere, under any circumstance, at the drop of a hat. I was an exemplar of this renowned tradition. During the period of my marriage my wife had an endless list of complaints. None of these complaints had anything to say about my bedroom behaviour. Both before and after the marriage, I had a number of long term sleep partners. None of them had any complaint or comment in regard to my sleep habits. I have no recollection of sleep problems prior to the March 6th, 2011 injury.

Two years before the injury my employer placed me on an overnight shift. Working overnights mandated a reconfiguration of my entire schedule. I quickly learned that if I arrived home in the morning, and failed to instantly go to bed, that I would have sleep problems. I was able to discipline myself to get home, and get to sleep, despite sunlight, traffic noises, and high daytime temperatures. This complete inversion of normal sleep patterns was managed without difficulty.

After the Injury

The first week after the March 6th, 2011 accident was devoted to constant sleep. I returned home from work and slept until it was time to return to the office. Since all our work had been transferred to another global location, there was no work for me to perform. I dozed at my desk despite having slept all day. After the first week this need for sleep moderated.

Sleep problems continued from May through to July and August of 2011. I experienced a sense of brain fog that I was unable to fully shake. I explained this to myself as a consequence of 2 years on a night shift. It required five months of effort before the brain fog dissipated.

From the summer of 2011, up until May – June of 2012, I was engaged in a search for work. My memory of this period is patchy. I remember waking spontaneously at 0300 or 0400 to check job boards and similar listings. Once a prospect was identified, I would commence work on a cover letter and fine tune my CV to target the needs of the prospective employer. Around noon I would take a nap. I would lie down, be instantly asleep, and wake automatically between 45 minutes and an hour later feeling fully refreshed. I am unable to determine if this sleep schedule was consistent over time. I know there were repeated mornings on which I woke very early. I know I also had the need for naps. Sometimes these preceded lunch and sometimes they came afterwords. I do not remember my activity in the late afternoons apart from the fact I was much less efficient in both the afternoons and evenings, and much more prone to error. I have no memory in respect of what time I went to bed. Nor can I be sure that my evening sleep schedule was a consistent one. I do remember that when I first started seeing Dr D and Dr H, I would quickly become extremely tired, would have a headache at the end of a one hour session, and would need to carefully navigate home whereupon I immediately took a nap. Both doctors scheduled my appointments for around mid-day due to concerns over my dealing with traffic when overcome by fatigue.

November 2012 to January 2013

From November 2012 until January 2013, all of my time was devoted to the filing of an appeal document. This was a major undertaking. I was still operating at a very slow pace (my initial 5 page letter to the insurer had taken me 5 weeks to compose) and I faced a fixed deadline for appeal submission. I worked non-stop around the clock. To avoid recurrent headaches, I increased my nap frequency. Over time these naps became less and less effective. The average nap duration increased from 45 minutes to two, and then to three hours. I found myself waking in the middle of the night, working until signs of a headache, taking a nap, waking from the nap, and resuming work for three or four hours until the need for another nap. By January, I was experiencing headaches almost immediately after waking. Sleep no longer provided the prior restorative effect.

February 2013 to April 2013

From February to April 2013, I undertook a programming project. This followed the same schedule as was employed for the appeal, but on a slightly more relaxed basis. I was not confronted by a fixed deadline and was able to arrange my own hours. This project collapsed after the initial roll out. I was unable to make timely response to the demands of the client group. Once a fixed response time was imposed, my ability to perform quickly degraded. The entire project blew up in my face. I was left feeling embarrassed, and humiliated. This was the first time I failed to meet a project deadline. It was also the first time my customer service skills failed me.

In May 2013, Dr H suggested I reactivate a dormant blog. I did as suggested. You are now reading the result. The second section of this personal history relies on the blog for evidence of sleep habits subsequent to this date.